To expect cough medicine to do what it says on the bottle and actually provide some relief?

[the3ofus]

I have been hacking away with a cough for the past three days. This morning, in desperation, I took some cough medicine which promised to "relieve symptons". I did not expect a magical, instant cure but had hoped my one hour commute to work on the train would be tolerable. Instead I spent it coughing away miserably into my hanky, trying not to notice that everyone sitting near me was slowly shrinking away from me... (and I don't blame them!). I am sat her coughing away- the cough medicine has had NO effect.

How do these medicines get licensed when they DO NOT work? I remember buying some medicine for dd when she was little and suffered from coughs and they didn't work on her either...

Aparently a spoon of honey works just as well. I heard that on Radio 4 so it must be true!

they never work, waste of time

Cough medicines mostly don't work. The active ingredients are usually in such small doses that they don't have much of a chance. Some even mix cough-suppressing ingredients with expectorants - ones which should loosen it up so you can cough it up and out. Pointless.

The non-brandname soothing stuff has some effect - glycerine, glycerol, glycine, something like that? and has the advantage of being cheap.

Waste of money, i have tried numerous cough medicines over the years, even prescribed ones dont work

Hope you feel better soon

they don;t work, they just like making monay out of us while we waste lots of monay and time trying to find one that does work.

honey is the best thing apparently, but I haven;t tried it yet as I haven;t had a cough like that for a while.

I just don't get how they can license these damn things when they do not work. Surely it must be a trading standards issue? I just dread sitting on the train hacking all the way home. I know I am irritating everyone in the office although no-one has suggested I take my cough home yet...

chocolate is more effective

www.bupa.co.uk/health_information/html/health_news/301104chocolatecough.html

Most don't seem to 'do what it says on the tin'. But for hacking coughs I've found the Boots honey, lemon and glycerine stuff works very well.

Simple is best! At home I would have hot water, lemon and honey. (Would add whisky but can't stand the stuff!)

the thing is tho, they can get away with licensing it as they are not peddling it as a cure, but as a relief, and while you are actually swollowig the stuff it IS relieving it, so they have proven their claim!

nah they don't work. Believe it or not coughing is a conscious choice and you can't medicate against that except with mental health drugs and feel good drugs such as found in chocolate and alcohol.

I once had a job that involved defending such medicines so I know how hard it is to prove they work. The marketing is clever.

Having coughed myself sick the other night, tried honey and god knows what else, I finally took a large dose of children's cough medicine and finally stopped coughing.

Psychological or not, all I know is I finally got some sleep.

Thing is there are numerous causes of cough...and they all need different meds.

Also as HedgeWitch says the definition of the word "exectorant" is "to cough up and spit out (phlegm from the respiratory passages)"...with the aim being to clear teh chest and cause a long term^ improvement of the symptoms.

Even then - as you say the meds are generally not that effective.

PHW IIRC That's gagging.

It's tickly and it's very very hard, but you can often choose not to cough.

I took part in an experiment once where they spayed irritants on the back of your throat and you had to see how long you can go without coughing.

Our local childrens hospital did a test on these and they found that they provided no more relief than drinking water.

Actually I think you were making a conscious effort not to cough Snowlight....

This is one of the contributing reasons to teh ban on cough medicine sfor under 2's....the fact that they may if used incorrectly cause harm...but when used correctly do absolutely bugger all. The risk benefit was therefore skewed towards risk...

There are two types of cough generally and 2 types of medication;

type one - expectorant - makes you cough stuff up so only good for catarrhy coughs

type 2 - tickly constant cough when you can't help coughing - you need an anti-tussive medicine like bog standard Benylin

I had the second type over Christmas where I did not stop coughing for 2 days - that's 2 days with no sleep. I was all for driving into a wall til I called NHS direct and they explained about anti-tussives. Within an hour of taking it I was asleep.

the don't work. take ibuprofen to reduce inflamation in your throat and that should help with the irritation and coughing

coughing is definately a conscious choice.

They don't work tis a big con - a spoonful of honey, preferably manuka is the same cost and will actually ease the cough

To the OP - are you sure you haven't got asthma?

Yes. Those of us with coughs that don't stop is just our crap willpower.

Many cough relief don't do much, I will give you that. Cough suppressants like pholcodine though do imo.