Kids and cough syrup, interesting article

This confirms something my brother told me years ago- cough syrups don't work, especially in kids:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060109/hl_nm/cough_dc

I knew it, I knew it!

i have read they are useless before. i rarely use them. just halls.

Very true. I've been saying this forever now, lol. My PED is completely against any kind of antihistamine, cough suppressant, decongestant, etc. He has twice prescribed a prescription decongestant, once for Kylie and for Megan, though.

I saw this this morning on T.V. But I don't agree.

I heard about it this moring that they just dont work on anyone, never have for me. Now something like ricola does help me

So if it is harmful to children, then what to do about it?? Our children want to stop the hacking, as much as we want to stop it as parents, so what to do to ease it???

Our bodies are designed to rid of normal cold/flu sickness IMO. It just takes time and we are unpatient creatures of nature. It took us over 4 weeks to rid of our colds, but we did w/o any products of any sort. We use humidifiers, other natural ways to help ease our discomfort.

I am all for letting sickness pass out of your system, as an adult. But for my girls I would like to keep their misery down. It is an interesting finding, I am not always trusting of what drug companies say either. They are the ones gettting the big bucks off of us. It will be something interesting to do some more looking on, though. Someone will always rebut what others say~~ red flags rise when it is when the ones that are rebutting are the ones getting PAID.

Thanks for the information!

I agree about the drug companies, but you know I have come across many PEDS and urgent care docs who say the same thing as that article. Yes, they too are in the money making business, that's why they push certain drugs than others. I was all for cold meds until my PED/general doc explained to me the harm they do than the good.

I think all of us want to ease the misery our children feel when they are sick, but there really is only so much you can do and saying that one would give a med just to help even if they aren't sure if will help is a flaw in argument IMO. It's like saying I'll go ahead and give them an antibiotic even though they don't really need it because it could decrease their misery temporarily. Well that only harms the child because they build up intolerance to it. Course I feel the same about chickenpox vax, flu vax, etc.

I'm with Karen on this one. Our bodies are designed to help us fight off the symptoms- coughing is the body's way of loosening up the mucous , and repressing it is interfering with our natural defenses. Nobody wants to see her child suffer, but if you can understand that many, if not most, OTC cold products exist for one reason only- profit. It may make you feel like you're "doing something" to administer cold remedies, but it's all essentially ineffective chemicals and dyes, and why give your kids drugs if they aren't gonna help anyway??? As has been pointed out here before, it is our job as parents to protect our kids from the evils of the free marketplace, and to me, the pharmaceutical companies are way at the top of the big bad wolf list.

Well said.


Also I wanted to mention that it is really harmful to give infants cough suppressants because they won't learn to cough up the mucuous and at some point as a child/adult they need to learn to do that. I'm not explaining it just right, but you can get the jist.

We hardly use anything around here. The kids will only get Tempra or Tylenol when they have a higher than usual fever (not a little fever). Ourselves hardly eer take anything.... if I take something, it's usually something like Ricola or halls, just to ease the ache in my throat - now and then I'll have NeoCitran, and even rarer I'll have some Sinutab - but usually any meds I take is right before bed, to use that 15 minutes of temporary immediate relief to be able to fall asleep hassle/hack free... and if I'm having a REALLY hard time - I'll take a swig of Buckleys. I think it's more that it's so gross, that I don't cough cuz I don't want to take any more rather than it working though. Gross. *shivers*

My doctor always told me that if I use any type of medication, to use it until the cold was done.... becuase the bacteria could build up immunity against it, and that that is the reason why a lot of medication had to be bigger and stronger now.

In any case... when my kids are really stuffed up - we still use the snot sucker on them. When it's in their chest... I put them over my lap (as if I was going to spank them) and I beat gently on their backs...to loosen the phlegm so that they can cough it up better. And the kids are encouraged to goand spit in the toilet rather than swallow it back down. I sorta half swallow, half spit..... spitting it out after clearing my throat REALLY makes me gag. s oif it didn't clear all the way into my mouth... it's going back down. Sorry, TMI.

We also use lots of Vicks Vaporub around here, on the chest and back.

Yep-we use this too. They make a baby version now and I've been using it on Lissie-It's been a lifesaver!

I try to medicate my children as little as possible( it's been very trying for me to have Bri get pneumonia and Lissie get bronchiolitis because I've had to give them both medication for it -Never cough medicine though). I have used it in the past and couldn't say whether it really works or not, but I'd rather they just tough it out and get done with it asap. I've always heard that using cold medicine, etc. just lengthens the duration of an illness. I did give Lissie an antihistamine to ease her breathing during her bout of sickness and that did seem to help, but if she hadn't been so terribly miserable I probably wouldn't have done even that. I believe that body was designed to fight off illness and why interfere with it?

This post has been edited by 4littleladies on Jan 10 2006, 08:53 AM

In any case... when my kids are really stuffed up - we still use the snot sucker on them[QUOTE]

Isn't that thing THE BEST???????

Has anyone had a child that makes matters worse when using one of those things? With Kylie, it was no problem. But with Megan if we use one she screams and cries and makes the snot worse and ends up puking.

Yep-I tried it with Lissie a few times this past couple of weeks and it just ticked her off and it certainly didn't seem to help.

I was listening to the news late last night and they were discussing how off the shelf cough syrups were no help just a frustration to the child.

We don't use cough syrups. The one we use is either Tylenol with DM or Dimetapp with DM and that's it.

I agree let the body do its own thing
I saw it on the news last night

Naomie hates it too - probably because I block the other nostril while it's sucking.... gets more out that way.



They other two have no problem with it - I've always laughed and played with it - it was a game... to see if I could take the boogies out before it tickled... and if they were good while I did it, they could have a few smarties.



Then again, these are the kids that open wide when they DO get tylenol drops.

Hopefully I can get Naomie to get as used to it as the other 2 are. I use a white one with a bigger bulb... I was always too afraid to use the long thin ones - I didn't want to go too far up the nose. There's no way this one is going anywhere other than the nostrils for a little one... lol

You know I had never heard of this and it sort of makes me mad because Hanna was coughing last night so I gave her some Dimetapp, and everytime I do, I notice it just makes her sleepy and that is it, doesn't help her coughing! Well now I know not to use expensive non-working cough meds anymore I'm just making her tired is all I am doing! bless her heart, now I feel bad

My ped says baby benadryl can help just at night to ease the drainage and in turn ease the coughing, plus can help them nod off when they're feeling so yucky. And it's a big no no to use vaporizers these days because of the possibility of burns, but my ped swears they do better than humidifiers if you have a safe place to use one. You Vicks lovers, have you tried the waterless ones that heat a pad w/Vicks and send the vapors out? There's also an outlet version that you plug in. I love em.

nope. we rub the stuff on the outside layer of an inner layer of clothes.

If that didn't make sense - we rub it on the outside of an undershirt, amd have another shirt on top of it. Neither the kids nor I like the cold feeling vicks gives you

So if anything is to be used, Benadryl would be the best?? As for me and the girls, we are not medication lovers. I will give them meds for a fever mostly. I have given them cold meds in the past, but I seldom take any meds~i believe as most of you do, that the body is designed to take care of itself. That is why I am even reluctant to do give the girls anything. But I have. Now I will think twice about it.

We have used the patches for kids, for their coughs. It did not really work, and Christian hated having anything sticky on her chest.

The patches actually burned Colt (he's got sensitive skin) but the plug in ones give the entire room a burst w/out the steam.