How to get rid of a cough and when to see a doctor

Cough can be a bother at any time of the year. Together with a therapist, we understand the possible causes and consider treatment options.

The respiratory tract of our body is covered with a thin layer of cells with cilia. They constantly move and remove all the mucus and dirt from the lungs and bronchi to the outside. But if the amount of irritants or mucus is too large, or if a foreign body enters, the second defense mechanism comes to the aid of the first - coughing.

Andrey Besedin, PhD, internist, family doctor at GMS Clinic.

Coughing is a protective reflex of our respiratory tract. It is needed to shake off all the excess that gets there. Coughing effectively rids the body of almost any irritant that may enter the respiratory tract.

Why does a cough appear?

A cough can start due to any object or substance entering the respiratory tract: food fragments, perfume vapors or aerosols. Sometimes it is caused by allergies, and sometimes by stress.

Most often, a cough is provoked by viruses or bacteria and their waste products. In this case, the cough is called infectious, and its manifestations will differ depending on the pathogen:

Manifestations of an infectious cough:

• Coronavirus infection. The cough is most often dry and debilitating; in addition, there are other symptoms: shortness of breath, weakness, fever, headache.
• Pneumonia. Symptoms depend on the type of infection, but often the disease begins with coughing, which increases and turns into a constant wet cough. The amount of sputum increases, chest pain, fever, and weakness may appear. There is a general deterioration in the condition.
• Bronchitis. The cough is wet and becomes easier after clearing the throat. When breathing deeply, sounds are sometimes heard in the chest - they are caused by the fact that phlegm accumulates in the bronchi.
• Whooping cough. The cough with this disease is debilitating, paroxysmal, prolonged, and interferes with sleep. It is difficult to find a position to relieve the condition. Constant coughing causes pain in the intercostal muscles, and hemorrhage may occur in the eye. Over time, the frequency of attacks decreases, but this condition sometimes lasts for several months.

A cough can be a sign not only of an infectious disease, but also of other conditions and diseases.

The most common ones are:

• Allergies and asthma. In most cases, coughing attacks occur after contact with an irritant in the air.
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a lung disease characterized by chronic restriction of air flow in the airways. The main symptoms of COPD are cough with phlegm and shortness of breath.
• Heartburn or gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). The movement of acidic stomach contents up the esophagus causes irritation of the mucous membrane of the throat and vocal cords, which contributes to coughing and tickling.
• Nervous breakdown. In a stressful situation, especially in children, nervous coughing is possible as a variant of a nervous disorder such as a tic.
• Foreign body or tumor.
• Smoking.
• Tuberculosis.

Bromhexine during pregnancy

The effectiveness of bromhexine in bronchopulmonary diseases is determined by its mucolytic and secretomotor actions. It helps to liquefy sputum and can relieve a dry cough or improve the evacuation of thick and purulent discharge during a wet cough. Improving the mobility of the cilia of the epithelium lining the lower respiratory tract will speed up the removal of stagnant mucus, promoting rapid recovery.

Bromhexine: instructions for use

This medicine is approved for use from the 2nd and 3rd trimester only on medical advice. An important role is played by the release form (tablets, syrup, solution, etc.) and the manufacturer. The list of chemicals included in the drug, in addition to the main active component bromhexine hydrochloride, will depend on them. Less preferable for pregnant women are syrups that contain sweeteners, dyes, flavors and require a high daily dose.

Bromhexine is excreted in breast milk and is therefore not recommended for use by nursing women. Consultation with your physician is required before use.

How to understand the cause of a cough

To understand the cause of a cough, you need to answer several questions:

• When does a cough occur? At night during sleep, after exercise or after eating?
• Have you had contact with people with ARVI in the last few days?
• Do you have any gastrointestinal disease or symptoms of stomach upset?
• Is there sputum, what does it look like?
• Did the cough appear during birch flowering or after contact with other allergens?
• Is the cough accompanied by other symptoms? Do you have fever, chills, weakness, or are you losing weight?
• Have you been under a lot of stress recently?
• Is the office or apartment well ventilated, is there a humidifier?
• How long does the cough last? Is it decreasing or increasing?

If you characterize a cough, it will be approximately clear where to look for the cause and how urgently you need to see a doctor. Any type of cough that lasts more than a few days, interferes with sleep, is accompanied by a high fever, or produces a pronounced colored discharge is a reason to see a doctor. You need to go to an appointment especially quickly if your cough makes it difficult to inhale and exhale when you are short of breath.

How to get rid of a cough

You need to go to the doctor and not self-medicate, but this is not always possible to do right away. If you can’t get an appointment right away, there are ways to alleviate the condition using proven methods.

Fresh air

If you fantasize, the best option is to live on the shores of the warm Mediterranean Sea, not to stress, to eat well and tasty and not to get sick. But this is not always possible, so you need to take care of respiratory hygiene. The first and most important thing is to moisturize the mucous membranes. We forget to humidify the air where we are constantly located. Offices often have a central air filtration system, which is not efficient enough. In this case, walks in the forest or park help.

Dry, dusty air irritates the mucous membranes and worsens the cough. Therefore, you can install a humidifier at home or place a damp towel on the radiator; in addition, you should do wet cleaning more often and do not forget to open the windows for ventilation.

Natural remedies

Evidence-based medicine treats herbal infusions with caution. Herbs can cause allergies, and the concentration of the beneficial substance in them is unknown, it is difficult to measure it for normal dosing of the medicine.

Lollipops

The easiest way to moisturize the mucous membranes is to use any lozenges. It is not necessary to buy medicine from a pharmacy; you can take any tasty ones from the store. This stimulates the flow of saliva and slightly moistens the oropharynx.

Drink plenty of fluids

It moisturizes the mucous membranes and thins the mucus, making it easier for the body to get rid of it. If there is not enough fluid in the body, the sputum becomes thicker, coughing is worse, and can become a breeding ground for bacteria and cause complications.

Saline solution

A salt solution should be instilled into the nose for a cough that appears due to irritation of the back wall of the throat with nasal discharge. You can buy saline solution at the pharmacy or make it at home: dissolve a quarter teaspoon of soda and half a teaspoon of salt in a glass of water (250 ml).

Inhalations with saline solution

They moisturize the respiratory tract well and help remove phlegm, but in recent decades, world medicine has increasingly warned against inhalation without prior examination by a doctor.

Medicines

There are many medications available to treat coughs that are freely available at pharmacies. But you can take them only after consulting a doctor. With a common ARVI, moisturizing the mucous membranes and drinking plenty of fluids work no worse than medications, and purchasing the wrong medications can worsen the condition.

For example, if you take cough suppressants to get rid of an annoying cough, sputum can accumulate in the bronchi and cause bacterial complications.

The doctor can prescribe medications if he sees the need. Most often this is:

• Antitussives. They are prescribed for dry, debilitating cough, when the cough interferes with sleep, for example, with whooping cough.
• Expectorants. They are prescribed for sputum that does not cough up on its own. Children under four years of age should not take such medications without a doctor's approval.
• Nasal drops. If the cause of the cough is a runny nose and mucus has flowed into the oropharynx, then they can help. But drops for a runny nose should not be used for more than 3-5 days due to the risk of addiction.
• Medicinal inhalations. In this case, bronchodilators or hormonal drugs are added to the saline solution to reduce inflammation and relieve spasm.
• Attacks of respiratory failure (bronchial obstruction) in children are relieved with inhaled medications, but this is discussed at a face-to-face meeting with parents. There is no need to create a home first aid kit based on articles from the Internet. After all, even a common runny nose does not have the same course, and it is not always possible to understand how to reduce bronchial obstruction in a particular patient right away, even at an appointment.

How to recognize a chronic cough

If the cough lasts more than three weeks, you need to be wary. Only a doctor can help determine the cause of the cough, its type and choose the right treatment.

The diagnosis of “Chronic cough” is made based on a discussion with a doctor; it is impossible to determine this on your own. Sometimes it happens that a person comes to an appointment and says that he has a chronic cough. It turns out that for the first three weeks he was recovering from an acute respiratory viral infection, then for two weeks there was an exacerbation of GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease), which provoked a cough. And another whole month fell on early spring and the spraying of some birch or alder. In this case, we are not talking about a chronic cough. And it happens that a patient has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and he coughs precisely because of it.

Unacceptable folk methods

Some herbs used in traditional medicine are inadmissible during pregnancy. Since their use can cause early labor and miscarriages due to increased blood pressure.

To avoid:

• Treatments with coltsfoot, ginseng, St. John's wort, ginkgo biloba, sage. Honey also carries the risk of allergic reactions and must be handled with caution. Acceptable in combination with milk;
• The use of Vietnamese cream “Zvezdochka” is not recommended due to the risk of allergic reactions to the components;
• You also need to be careful when warming up. No mustard plasters or cans! Instead of mustard plasters, it is better to use a cabbage leaf, on which you need to spread honey (or honey mixed with fresh cottage cheese) and apply it to your chest at night. You can secure the cabbage leaf with a warm scarf.
• Soaring your feet is also not recommended. You can wear warm wool socks instead.

Of course, you should not take hot baths, visit the sauna, or steam in the bathhouse. All this threatens bleeding and premature birth. Of course, alcohol treatment is not suitable either. During pregnancy and especially illness during such a crucial period, it is worth giving up bad habits altogether.

What to do if your cough bothers you

First of all, you need to sit or stand up and try to breathe in through your nose. If inhalation and exhalation through the nose is successful, then everything is fine for now. If you can’t take a breath, then you need to wake up someone close to you, try to scream or say something. If it works, then breathing is preserved - that’s not bad. If you can’t scream and breathe, you need to urgently call an ambulance.

If at night the cough interferes so much that it is impossible to sleep, you need to find out whether an ambulance and hospitalization are required.

While the ambulance is on the way, you need to:

• open the window to allow fresh cool air to enter;
• turn on hot water in the bathroom and breathe in the steam;
• calm down.

Features of cough in children

You should not buy coughing and expectorant medications for children on your own; they can worsen the condition and cause complications.

In most cases, young children have an irregular cough that occurs due to swelling of the nose. If the child does not have a high fever and shortness of breath, then most likely the cause of the cough is nasopharyngeal drip. In this case, mucus flows down the back wall of the nose and irritates the vocal cords. But at home it is impossible to determine this accurately.

A cough is not a disease, but one of the signs that something is wrong in the body. Most often, the cough goes away on its own and without consequences, but each situation is individual, and it is important to consult a doctor in time to look for the reasons. Especially if, in addition to coughing, there are other warning symptoms.

Prevention measures

In most cases, cough is caused by a respiratory tract infection. Therefore, prevention is aimed at preventing infection. The following recommendations must be followed:

1. Avoid visiting crowded places, especially during a flu epidemic.
2. Avoid contact with infected people, use personal protective equipment (masks).
3. Get a flu shot every year.
4. When planning pregnancy, make sure that you have immunity against rubella (booster vaccination at the age of 15 years).

Following these recommendations will reduce the risk of developing infection several times.