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For In Motion, I'm Curt Parker
[Coughing]
If you have children, this scene is all too familiar. A young child awakens in the middle of the night
with a hacking cough. In years past, most parents would simply retrieve the cough syrup
from the medicine cabinet, and watch as their child fell peacefully back to sleep.
In October of 2007, two advisory committees of the Food and Drug Administration made a recommendation to the FDA
that over-the-counter pediatric cold and cough medicine not be used on kids under the age of five.
That led to manufacturers voluntarily pulling all infant over the counter or OTC cold and cough medicines off the shelf.
Late in 2007 the FDA recommended that cold medicines no longer be advertised to be marketed to children.
The reason is because many studies have shown that it does not seem to decrease the duration of symptoms
and potentially have some side effects, including overdosing. With the safety and effectiveness
of children's cough medicine is put into question, what can a parent do to alleviate a hacking cough?
Research by the Penn State College of Medicine found that honey can be an effective and safe
treatment for coughs in children. Specifically buckwheat honey, when given before bedtime in a small dose
has been shown to provide more relief from a nighttime cough and better quality of sleep than
no treatment at all, or dextromethorphan, a cough suppressant found in many OTC medications.
For centuries, honey has been used to treat upper respiratory infection symptoms, such as a cough. It is considered
safe for children over one year in age, it's natural, and let's face it, who's gonna say no to a dose of honey?
Recently, Hershey Medical Center had a study where they check Buckwheat honey versus dextromethorphan
which is a common cough suppressant that it's found pretty much in all of the cough medications over the counter.
It's otherwise known as DM. So there are many medications such as Robitussin DM (?), Mucinex DM, that all contain
dextromethorphan. It acts on the brain to tell it to not make you cough from little irritations.
Unfortunately, it does have some side effects including drowsiness, and in children it can potentially be dangerous.
With the recommendation against child cold remedies, what are some of the things that can aid in the fight against the common cold?
Well, you can also try some saline nasal sprays, okay, and if its an infant, you can use some saline
nasal drops, just drop one to two drops or even more sometimes if its a big infant
into both nostrils, and what that will do is loosen the mucus, and most of the time the baby will sneeze.
And that's how they get out a lot of the stuff that's in there. You can try to use a bulb syringe if the baby's not sneezing
well enough but I would advise that you don't do it too often, don't do it like five times a day
because that can sometimes actually irritate the nasal passages a little bit in babies.
Another thing that you can try to do is ice pops, especially if there's a sore throat, and that just helps soothe
a lot of the pain that's associated with a sore throat. You can always use some of those methylated drops for those
humidifiers, so that the air is a little easier to breathe and helps to shrink the nasal swelling a lot.
I would say that if you do have a young baby you can always try using some menthol chest rubs, they come
in all different brands, and, just look for menthol.
Even though these remedies have proven to help against the common cold, there is still
an age-old technique that can't be ignored.
Hand-washing is key whenever you have a cold, flu, anything like that. And it's not only key for the person who has it
but for everybody else in the household actually, it just cuts down on spread of any viral, bacterial, any type of infection.
For In Motion, I'm Curt Parker.