Summer is coming, and under the attack of hot and humid weather, many children have developed hot cough symptoms. In the process of caring for their children, many parents have fallen into the misunderstanding, and increased the risk of disease while treating the disease.
Truth: Not necessarily.
As soon as the child coughs, many parents will worry: Is it a cold and sick? But in fact, cough is a reflex defense action of the human body, it is not necessarily a manifestation of illness.
Cough causes are thousands, allergic reactions, respiratory diseases are two common, foreign body stimulation is also common, such as contact with cold air, dust, smoke and other external stimuli, people are prone to cough reaction, this cough is conducive to removing irritating factors, protecting the respiratory tract.
Therefore, when the child coughs, he cannot simply and roughly feed cough medicine, but first find out the cause, and then relieve cough symptoms through medication.
Truth: Most phlegm is harmless.
Sputum is mucus secreted by the trachea and bronchi, usually not much, with two major functions of "throat moistening" and "throat protection". When viruses and bacteria invade, a large amount of secreted sputum sticks to the germs and prevents them from invading further.
Sputum is equivalent to post-war waste, and it is basically wrapped in "dead things": corpses of immune cells, remains of various pathogens and necrotic epithelial cells... In short, the germs in the phlegm basically cannot survive.
Even if you really swallow the phlegm, don't worry, the stomach acid and digestive enzymes in the gastric juice can also kill the surviving microorganisms.
However, a small number of diehards, such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes tuberculosis, may not be able to get it through gastric juice, and this phlegm is not recommended to swallow.
Truth: Not only is it ineffective, it is harmful.
In addition to colds and allergies, the common cold is the cause of most children's coughs, which are mostly caused by viral infections, while antibiotics target bacterial infections.
Therefore, taking antibiotics to treat cough is useless, and eating too much can easily cause toxic deafness with drugs, the China Center for Rehabilitation of Deaf Children pointed out that the number of children under 7 years old in mainland China due to the abuse of antibiotics caused by deafness is as high as 300,000.
In addition, the irrational use of antibiotics will also increase the body's drug resistance and reduce the therapeutic effect of drugs.
Truth: Not recommended.
Many children take medicine, purely relying on their parents to "break blindly". Manual proportioning of adult doses of drugs, it is difficult to grasp the accurate dosage, and the safety risks are great. If you eat too much medicine, the child is easy to hurt the body, and if you eat less, you will not achieve the therapeutic effect.
And children are not "scaled-down adults", their liver and kidney development is not perfect, detoxification ability is poor, safe for adults on them, may increase the risk of adverse reactions, affect normal development.
At present, there are many dosage forms of drugs for common diseases such as cough, fever, and cold, so try to choose special drugs for children when buying, if not, try to go to the hospital to let the pediatrician prescribe medicine.
The Chinese Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Cough in Children (2021) indicate that cough caused by acute respiratory infections in children lasts for more than 10 days, and some even last for more than 2 weeks or more.
Therefore, parents should not rush to give their children medicine, daily nursing first to relieve symptoms, when symptoms seriously affect life, you can follow the doctor's advice to use medicine scientifically.
Drink plenty of water. Drink 1.5 to 2 liters of water a day, keep your throat moist, and avoid coughing that worsens due to dryness.
Maintain a suitable humidity indoors. Use a humidifier to control the humidity of the room to 40%-60%, relieve throat discomfort.
Eat honey. WHO notes that honey is beneficial in relieving cough caused by upper respiratory tract infections, effectively reducing the frequency and intensity of coughing, especially for nighttime cough (not suitable for children under 1 year of age).
Stay away from smoking environments. Tobacco smoke can exacerbate respiratory dryness, inflammatory irritation, and induce coughing.
If the above care can not improve the child's cough symptoms, it is recommended to consult a specialist and use children's special cough and phlegm drugs according to the doctor's advice, such as etanjin ambrobuterol oral solution, which is a compound preparation, the formula composition is in line with the physiological characteristics of children's respiratory tract, can help relieve acute and chronic respiratory diseases caused by cough, thick sputum, difficulty in expiring sputum, wheezing and other problems.
It is important to note that if your child's cough lasts more than 2 weeks, gets sicker, or has a short cough but has any of the following, see a doctor right away:
- Cough with blood, hoarse cough or with barking, vomiting, and wheezing
- Accompanied by dyspnea, cyanosis
- Fever, affecting eating and sleeping
In general, to treat children's cough, parents should relax their minds, observe patiently, and do not blindly use medicine. If there is a problem, seek the help of a doctor in time, and leave professional things to professional people to do.
Resources:
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[3] Jingjing. Ninety percent of drugs without children's dosage form children taking reduced adult drug hidden dangers[J].Guangxi Quality Supervision Herald,2015(03):24-25.)
[4] Xie Yufei, Gu Hua. Distribution of causes and related factors of chronic cough in children[J].China Journal of Continuing Medical Education,2017,9(24):42-43.)
[5] ZHAO Chunyong. Causes and preventive measures of cough in children[N]. Public Health News,2022-08-30(044). DOI：10.28213/n.cnki.ndzjk.2022.001252.