Help!

[pegkerr]

Your remedies, please, for a persistent, non-productive, agonizing, hacking cough, caused by spring pollen allergies. I have taken Claritin, and Ibuprofin for the fever, and I'm eating cough drops and sucking down tea, but this cough is killing me, and it's tearing me apart. Suggestions?

I'm desperate here.

Comments

[snippy]

If it's non-productive, don't take Sudafed (or other drying agent). Take a cough syrup with both guifanesen (to loosen up the flegm and make it easier to cough, so you don't hurt yourself trying so hard) and detromethorphan (to help suppress unnecessary coughing).

Also, dark chocolate has been found as effective as cough syrup in controlling coughing. So eat some dark chocolate.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Just a note - as far as I know, renforced by my own experience, Sudafed is non-drying. It's the antihistamines (Actifed, Benadryl, Chlor-trimeton, Tavist-D, loratidine/Claritin, etc.), which are exactly the right thing for allergies, that are unfortunately drying. Possibly a pharmacist, nurse, or doctor could recommend the least drying of the bunch.

From what I know, and according to the pharmacist I consulted, Sudafed used to be psuedoephdrine HCL, which actually made things more runny, and is now phenylephrine HCL, which shrinks enflamed mucus membranes rather than affecting the production of mucus directly at all. (It's still possible to get pseudoephedrine HCL in the US, by the way, just more of a nuisance, so if, like me, you don't want to make meth in your basement and you do want to actually unstuff your sinuses of thick goo, there's still a way without going to the 'eating wasabi paste straight' method of sinus-clearing.)

On the other hand, everyone's mileage varies, always, so it may very well be that some people experience Sudafed as drying, and I just never heard about it before.

[snippy]

Thanks for the clarification--I was just going on what my doc told me recently, when I had a persistent cough following a bad virus. I take 2 prescription anti-allergy meds, and don't usually use Sudafed of either type.