Every cough that lasts long is a good reason to visit a man in a white coat.
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Cough is an extreme and explosive expiration and it serves to eject foreign particles from respiratory tract or to remove excretion product and mucus created in respiratory tract. Because of that, coughing from time to time is a precondition for normal breathing.
Cough medicines occupy probably the most shell space in drugstores. Palette of those drugs is really impressive: from different syrups and drops to inhalation equipment.
It is important for every patient who coughs that their doctor detects and heals the cause of the cough and if it's necessary to treat the symptoms.
For the better diagnose tell your doctor how long you cough, is cough character changeing, what stimulates the cough (a period of a day, food, drink, speaking, cold air, body position, exertion). Is cough dry or wet, do you feel the pain in the throat, behind breastbone or in lungs. Also, tell your doctor is cough followed by hoarseness, dizziness or some other symptom
Then, try to remember and tell the doctor if you are already sick of some other illness that doctor at that moment cannot connect to coughing, but can retrospectively deduce that it can be the only reason for coughing (some autoimmune illnesses, tumours, or heart and kidney diseases). When you give to doctor all those answers, he will have correct image of your cough and that is the most valuable thing in determination of the right therapy.
"Should I need to calm down the coughing or to induce it?" This is the question on which only rare non-medical people can tell proper answer. Although it looks as buying cough medicine is a very simple task, don't be your own doctor. Cough, as any other symptom, is always a symptom of something else. Sometimes cough may pass as it came, sometimes it needs full attention. For example, asthma can show only as a cough. In that case the doctor will treat the cough with drugs for asthma.
Cough can appear from time to time, it can be continuous, hacking cough, but it can also be gruelling, spasmodic cough in attacks. If cough is frequent and boringly long, it makes person tired. It engages a big group of muscles (stomach muscles, rib cage, muscles of bottom of the pelvis) and it demands increased spending of oxygen and energy needed for another systems in the body.
By doing that the cough obstructs our time of resting and sleeping, decreases the appetite and brings down immunity of all body which then becomes submissive for other illnesses.
Some of drugs can cause long-lasting cough. Those are primary drugs for cardiac diseases and high pressure. Speak with your doctor to change it and cough will gone.
American paediatric warned parents about cough syrups for children and cold medicine, for they can cause serious consequences in children under six years (stronger heart beating, higher blood pressure). When we talk about cough remember the old folk medicine: warm milk with honey can benefit both parents and children.
Keep in mind, every cough that last long (caused without particular reasons) is a good reason to visit a man in a white coat. ■