Treating your cough

Practical advice

• Eat healthy food and avoid sugar or sugary foods which suppress the immune system for up to 5 hours after being eaten. 
• Get plenty of rest so your body can recover
• Maintain hydration and keep your mucus membranes moist with frequent drinks of water or soothing teas.
• Soothe inflamed airways and loosen mucus with steam inhalations and warm showers.
• Avoid cigarettes and tobacco smoke which paralyse and eventually destroy the microscopic hairs that line your airways. These fine hairs, called cilia, normally sweep the mucus upwards in waves, away from your lungs.

Good news for chocoholics

Chocolate can help a cough! Theobromine, a compound found in the cocoa bean, will suppress coughs just as effectively as many cough medicines but without their side-effects. Milk chocolate contains very little theobromine compared to dark chocolate. To obtain an effective dose you need to eat 50 – 100g of dark chocolate. Enjoy!

Homeopathy and research

One interesting study with seriously ill patients on respirators in an intensive care unit showed that homeopathy not only effectively reduced their respiratory secretions but also helped them come off their respirators more quickly. The length of time they spent in the unit was also shorter and without respiratory complications.

In contrast, those in the control group who had not received homeopathic treatment took considerably longer to recover. Some also had to be returned to the respirator after extubation because they were struggling to breathe from excessive secretions in their airways – something that was not a problem for the homeopathic group. As excess respiratory secretions are a major trigger for coughs, the homeopathic treatment would also have reduced the incidence of coughs – something that is also substantiated clinically.

Another study of children with upper respiratory tract infections, including coughs, showed that those who received homeopathic treatment recovered much more quickly than those who were treated conventionally in the control group.

A third study showed that those children whose colds (and accompanying coughs) were treated with homoeopathy were more likely to feel and do better than those children whose colds had been treated conventionally. The homeopathically treated children had fewer complications, and their parents took significantly less sick-leave than the parents of those children treated with antibiotics.

Homeopathic treatments

Treating yourself with homoeopathy for simple acute problems is easy as long as you know how to choose the remedy that matches your symptoms. Troublesome coughs that follow a cold are a good way to practice and become familiar with homeopathy. All remedies are safe for use with babies through to the elderly when used according to instructions.

To treat your cough, look through the remedies listed below to see which one matches your symptoms – then just take it. Acute Dosing: Take 3 pellets every 15 minutes for an hour, or until symptoms improve. Stop taking remedy once symptoms resolve. If there is no improvement by 3-4 doses just reassess your symptoms and choose another remedy. 

Should you find it difficult to identify and sort through your symptoms, contact me and I’ll help you figure it out.

In the link below, you'll find Homeopathic Remedies for the Hacking Cough. Many of the following remedies are found in Fullscript. 

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