Accidental Blogger

After the horrors of plumbophobia , the next big meme in the media : Cough syrups and how bad they are for the youngest and most vulnerable among us. From the MSNBC article:

Over-the-counter cough syrups generally contain drugs in too low a dose
to be effective, or contain combinations of drugs that have never been
proven to treat coughs, said Dr. Richard Irwin, chairman of a cough
guidelines committee for the American College of Chest Physicians

Naturally, the cough syrup manufacturers’ group takes the opposite stance.

The Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a trade group for makers
of over-the-counter medications, disputed the guidelines and said
over-the-counter cough medicines provide relief to millions of people
each year.

My purely personal conclusion, after nights sitting up sleepless with coughing kids, matches exactly with the conclusions of the physicians. It’s all more for the ‘peace of mind’ of the adults administering what they hope will ease their child’s discomfort and get them to sleep, rather than real relief of the cough.  I can guarantee that I slept better after giving my coughing kid a dose of Delsym or Triaminic or Robitussin,  though I could never tell whether it helped my kid, who repeated the performance night after night till the cough finally died a natural death.

Sure enough this 2006 article from USA Today  (note the recycling of old news as new!) quotes the good Dr.Irwin as saying then:

"Cough is so common, and there are medicines that actually work," says
guidelines committee chair Richard Irwin, professor of medicine at the
University of Massachusetts Medical School. If you feel you need to
take something, he says, "take something that has been shown to be
helpful."
…

OTC cough medicines have been shown to have a strong placebo effect,
Irwin says. And coughs from colds eventually go away on their own, he
says. If a cough persists for weeks on end, he says, it might be a
result of something more serious than a cold and should be brought to a
doctor’s attention.

Since fall and colder temperatures have finally set in, the media has decided to do its dusting up of old articles and requesting fresh quotes from the same people who commented on the issue last year. A little controversy would never hurt the sales of cough syrups, would it? People might decide that they really need it and purchase more ("Stock up, before the FDA bans it" or some such idiocy).

Of course, the current (2007) article reads, at the end:

Coughs can have numerous underlying causes, including asthma, allergies, severe heartburn, postnasal drip and bronchitis.

Dr. Edward Schulman, an American Thoracic Society representative on the guidelines panel, said patients should see their doctors
for coughs that linger longer than three weeks or are accompanied by
shortness of breath, which could indicate pneumonia or other serious
conditions.

Coughs
due to colds usually last less than three weeks. Drinking lots of
fluids can help relieve these coughs, and so can chicken soup, Schulman
said.

Note the reference to the well-known folk remedy for all ills, though only at the end of the article. Of course, nothing like hot soup for colds and agues.

My preference for treating coughs is a spoon of honey dissolved in a couple of tablespoons of warm water. My kids are well-trained enough now that it’s what they ask for if a cough bothers them.

What’s your favorite?