If you cough with a cold, you are afraid to cough up pneumonia!
This advertisement is so deeply rooted in the hearts of the people that everyone will find various medicines to take as soon as they catch a cold and cough.
However, what we do not know is that there is no medicine to cure colds, and cough cannot be stopped by indiscriminate medication.
Have a cold, do you want to take medicine immediately?
Generally speaking, it is not necessary.
It takes only 3-5 days to remove the virus: colds are usually caused by viruses. These viruses can only be removed naturally by the immune system, and there is no specific medicine for what. Antibodies produced by our body’s immune system can remove the virus from the body in about 3-5 days. Therefore, some people joked that [it takes only a week to take medicine for a cold, but only seven days to take medicine].
It takes 2-3 weeks for symptoms to recover: although the virus is removed, the symptoms accompanying the cold may last for 2-3 weeks. Because after the immune system works, some inflammatory substances will be produced in the body, attached to nasal mucus or sputum, and they will stay in the respiratory tract, which will cause symptoms such as nasal congestion and cough. This is the normal response of the human body to the disease.
All you need to do is wait patiently, drink more water and rest. Although it sounds like chicken soup, there is no real [specific medicine] for colds, which is why American doctors usually do not recommend medicine for patients with common cold.
However, some symptoms accompanied by colds may make people very uncomfortable. At this time, there can be some targeted treatment methods to relieve the symptoms.
First, a cold accompanied by fever, what should I do?
If a cold has a high fever, the body temperature is above 38 ℃, and the pain is severe, if antipyretic drugs are needed, acetaminophen or ibuprofen can be selected. These two drugs are the most widely used and safest antipyretic drugs, and are also used to relieve other pains such as headache and toothache.
It should be noted that the dosage of medicine for babies is calculated according to body weight, while the dosage for adults is summarized according to clinical trials.
Acetaminophen
The normal dose for adults is 500 mg or 650 mg at a time, and it is taken every 4-6 hours, with a maximum of 4,000 mg a day.
Ibuprofen
The adult dose is usually 400 milligrams per time, once every 6 hours, and the maximum dose per day is 2,400 milligrams.
When drugs enter the human body, they need sufficient doses if they want to cure diseases. Some pregnant or nursing mothers will deliberately take less drugs, but in fact they all belong to the category of adults, and the dosage of drugs should also be taken according to the dosage of adults. Otherwise, the drugs taken cannot reach the effective dosage and cannot reach the purpose of treating diseases.
Second, I am always coughing. Do you want to take medicine? Can you cough up pneumonia?
If cough has phlegm, you can choose some phlegm-reducing drugs, but I do not recommend cough medicine, because cough is actually a normal physiological reaction of human body to expel phlegm.
If you are forced to use cough medicine to relieve cough, you cannot expel phlegm. Once the pathogen in the phlegm infects the lungs, new infections will form. In other words, coughing will not cause [pneumonia], but not coughing will aggravate your disease.
In short, if the cough is not very severe, don’t take cough medicine. If the cough is really severe, take medicine under the guidance of the doctor.
Three, nasal congestion, runny nose, what should I do?
If nasal obstruction and runny nose occur, physiological seawater nasal atomizer can be selected to care for the nose, or hot water vapor can be inhaled to relieve nasal obstruction.
Four, sore throat how to do?
If a cold is accompanied by sore throat, you can choose to rinse your mouth with light saline.
If light saline water cannot relieve the symptom, throat lozenge can also relieve the symptom, and throat lozenge can be used occasionally during lactation.
If the pain is really severe, acetaminophen can also be used to relieve the pain.
Three Tips for Buying Medicine
It is often said that these single-ingredient drugs I recommend are difficult to buy in pharmacies, such as ibuprofen tablets.
Here, I’ll tell you three tips:
1. Buy a single ingredient and squat down to find it.
Because single-ingredient drugs are usually cheaper and their profits are not high, pharmacies are merchants, and profit-seeking is the nature of merchants, so pharmacies will not put these drugs in the [golden position], but will mostly put them in the lowest and most inconspicuous positions on the shelves.
Step 2 Read the drug instructions carefully
In many pharmacies in China, besides pharmacists and general shop assistants, there are also many promoters of pharmaceutical factories. The drugs they recommend to you are not necessarily the most suitable for you, but probably the products of the pharmaceutical factories they represent, usually more expensive.
Therefore, when we buy medicine, we must carefully check whether the medicine recommended by the clerk is aimed at our own diseases and not be fooled by the clerk.
3. Choose regular big brand drugs
In addition, when choosing drugs, we should try our best to choose products produced by large brands, companies with good reputation or pharmaceutical factories, so that the quality of drugs is more guaranteed.
However, according to the current situation in pharmacies, if you want to buy very cheap drugs containing a single ingredient, don’t want to criticize its manufacturer any more. Because many times this kind of medicine is not available in small pharmacies, after all, they are too cheap, small pharmacies generally don’t sell, you can find it even if you are lucky.
This article is taken from the book “Ji Lianmei Talk: Chinese Should Use Drugs This Way”, which is reprinted by the author’s authorized clove garden.