 | Palpitations And Need To Cough
  Now that you have made a few concessions to your cold, have put your feet up and downed a few cups of juice and soup, you may feel good enough to wait out the next seven days. But suppose you still feel awful, have palpitations and need to cough or suppose you must get on with your life and cannot afford to sit back while the cold goes away. Two possibilities are open to you. You can seek relief from one or more of the cough and cold medicines fervently described in magazine and TV advertisements. Or, more drastically, you can go to your family doctor for an elixir dispensed only by prescription.
The second possibility is the easier to dispose of: Save yourself time and money by not calling your doctor. If your cold is nothing more than a cold, if your temperature is no higher than 102° F. (38° C.) and if you have no chronic ailments that might be aggravated by an upper respiratory infection, there is nothing a doctor can do for you that you Cannot do as well or better for yourself. Prescription cold preparations are similar to the nonprescription formulas you can buy at a pharmacy; antibiotics such as penicillin, tetracycline and erythromycin, which are also sold by prescription, can work miracles against bacterial infections but are useless in fighting the common cold or any other viral infection. This again is based on pain constant low grade fever symptoms.
The explanation for antibiotics’ unfortunate limitations lies in the different physical natures of bacteria and viruses. Bacteria exist as separate living organisms, independent of human cells. Their complex metabolic and reproductive processes, upon which their survival depends, are vulnerable to the action of antibiotics; when an antibiotic and bacteria come into contact, the antibiotic disrupts the bacteria’s life cycle, ending further infection. Viruses, by contrast, exist within their host’s cells and become part of the host cell structure, out of reach of any antimicrobial substance. During treatment work on the nutritional requirements needed to treat fever such as proper foods and drinks.
Some doctors will prescribe an antibiotic for a patient who demands it, on the theory that even if it does not do any direct good, it will at least not do any harm. Experience has shown, however, that the casual use of antibiotics can do very serious harm indeed. In Current Therapy, a standard desk reference for physicians, Dr. C. Alan Phillips of the University of Vermont College of Medicine summed up the dangers of using antibiotics against an acute viral infection. They have no antiviral action, and they may encourage the emergence of resistant organisms. In addition, serious toxic or allergic reactions to these potent drugs may occur. The patient may be sensitized to the antibacterial drug and thus be denied the use of an important therapeutic agent during a subsequent serious bacterial infection. This is not a good thing especially if you have palpitations and need to cough.
For these reasons, do not ask a doctor for an antibiotic unless there is a clear indication that a respiratory infection has bacterial complications. And be firm in turning down antibiotics proffered by a well-meaning friend. Too often, someone will try to present you with some leftover antibiotic pills or capsules that “cleared up a cold overnight.” You can be sure that the friend’s vanquished cold was not a cold or that the antibiotic was irrelevant to the recovery. It will certainly be irrelevant to the course of your own cold and may prove detrimental to your health. At the very least slow down your common cold recovery period.
What drugstore remedies can—and cannot—do With no antiviral medicine yet available, the best drug treatment is medicine you can buy without a prescription, over the counter, or OTC, in pharmacists’ jargon. There are hundreds designed to alleviate the symptoms of a cold. Most work, after a fashion. And most are safe, more or less. But to a great extent, buyers of cold remedies are on their own in evaluating the safety and effectiveness of over-the-counter drugs. This is why we must understand the importance of cough syrup when treating the flu. | Most Popular Common Cold And Flu ArticlesHow Does The Common Cold Affect Your Body Palpitations And Need To Cough Cough With Frothy White Sputum Types Of Rheumatic Heart Fever Pain Constant Low Grade Fever Nutritional Requirements Needed To Treat Fever Flu Symptoms With Neck And Back Pain And Muscle Aches Who Discovered Influenza Is Canada Ready For A Pandemic Influenza | |
| Governments are traditionally reluctant to regulate the medical business, and only recently have scientists come to understand the actions of many of these drugs on the body ‘s mechanisms. Even in the United States, for example, where medicines are strictly regulated, the chief regulatory agency in the field of drugs, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), used to limit its responsibility to the monitoring of drugs for toxicity alone.
Claims of effectiveness were left largely to the discretion of drug manufacturers—whose opinion of their own products was, not surprisingly, often generous in the extreme. By the same token, drug manufacturers were not regulated closely in the combinations of approved agents they chose to put together. The FDA raised no objections, for example, to the inclusion of infinitesimal quantities of antihistamines, even when those agents were irrelevant to the symptoms allegedly being treated or were present in amounts too small to be effective.
In 1972, however, at the FDA’s request, 17 professional panels, composed of nongovernment experts, including health care professionals, drug specialists, representatives from the OTC drug industry, and consumers, reviewed OTC products for effectiveness, safety, labeling and advertising claims. The cold and cough remedies panel considered some 50,000 products containing over 120 active ingredients. Its judgments, backed by new scientific knowledge of drug actions and effects, reinforced doubts about the value of many cold remedies.
The panel found that the makers of so-called shotgun remedies which combine many drugs in a single preparation, often load the mixture with agents that the user may not need. An individual cold might require no more than a decongestant or a painkiller, or a cough suppressant—but the consumer often gets all three, and possibly other substances for good measure. One understandably popular cold remedy is 25 per cent alcohol, which makes it the equivalent of 50- proof liquor. The panel recommended that manufacturers produce more single-agent products, targeted at single symptoms, so that cold sufferers could custom tailor a drug program to the specific symptoms that cause discomfort. Predictably, the panel also called for improvements in labeling and advertising, which it found generally “overly complicated, vague, unsupported by scientific evidence, and in some cases, misleading.”
Until recommendations like these take wide effect, you can expect to find a good many useless, even counterproductive, drugs mixed in with the worthwhile cough and cold medicines on your pharmacist’s shelves. To make informed choices, you will need to know something about the most common agents found in cold preparations—what symptoms, if any, each treats, and what its drawbacks may be. This is critical if you have palpitations and need to cough. | Twitter About The Common Cold Cure  | | Common Cold Tip Of The Day Colds are rather difficult to catch by way of the mouth. University of Wisconsin researchers tested couples, asking that in each couple, the cold-stricken partner kiss the unaffiliated one for 90 seconds. Only one caught cold. |
| |
