With cough, cold and flu system in full swing right now, I get many questions about what to take for treatment and symptom relief. The shelves are lined with many products all trying to stake out a special niche for your buying attention. In reality when it comes to symptom relief of fever, aches, coughs, colds, sniffles, and stuffy heads they are only five major ingredients in all the products and understanding their uses can help save you money and frustration.
Treatment of fever has alwas been possible with ASA, acetominophen or any of the over the counter NSAIDs such as ibuprofen or naproxen. These may be added to any cough or cold product so the product can claim to treat more symptoms in a single tablet or capsule. Children under 12 and anyone on an anticoagulant such as warfarin, should not take ASA.
For drying up drainage and shrinking swollen tissue in the nose and throat you need a decongestant and there are only two common ingredients, phenylephrine and pseudoephedrine. The former is available on the shelf and for the latter, you have to ask the pharmacy staff for pseudoephedrine. This is one of the ingredients highly sought after for illegal methamphetamine production so it is now only sold from behind the pharmacy counter and you may have to sign for it.
Which is better? Pseudoephedrine is far superior to phenylephrine so it is worth asking for it
For cough symptoms you need to decide if you want to loosen a cough or suppress it. I recommend loosening a cough only in daytime and using a cough suppressant overnight for better sleeping.
Guiafenesin is the best common expectorant for loosening a cough and sold under the brand name Mucinex© and also in plain Robitussin© cough syrup. Dextromethorphan is the best OTC cough suppressant and is found in many products and often identified in the label with the abbreviation DM. So you can take Mucinex-DM or Robitussin-DM or countless others. But consider what you are trying to do with the combo products. On one hand you are trying to loosen the cough with the guiafenesin and on the other hand you are trying to suppress the cough with the DM ingredient. Does that make any sense to you? It does not make sense to me.
The fifth ingredient in many products is an antihistamine. Common ones are chlorpheniramine and brompheniramine. They are not really very useful for cold symptoms, however they can help with allergy symptoms, which is what they were designed for in the first place.
So to summarize -
Phenylephrine - weak decongestant
Pseudoephedrine - stronger decongestant
Guiafenesin - expectorant for loosening a cough
Dextromethorphan - cough suppressant
antihistamines - not really very useful
There are new FDA rules out for what is safe for children under 2 so my comments on these ingredients are primarily for older children and adults.
Then I often get asked how to kill the infection. Stay tuned.....
drBob
PS - if you are not a subscriber to my email list, consider signing up using either my RSS feed (upper right) or join the email list (left hand column)
With cough, cold and flu system in full swing right now, I get many questions about what to take for treatment and symptom relief. The shelves are lined with many products all trying to stake out a special niche for your buying attention. In reality when it comes to symptom relief of fever, aches, coughs, colds, sniffles, and stuffy heads they are only five major ingredients in all the products and understanding their uses can help save you money and frustration.
Treatment of fever has alwas been possible with ASA, acetominophen or any of the over the counter NSAIDs such as ibuprofen or naproxen. These may be added to any cough or cold product so the product can claim to treat more symptoms in a single tablet or capsule. Children under 12 and anyone on an anticoagulant such as warfarin, should not take ASA.
For drying up drainage and shrinking swollen tissue in the nose and throat you need a decongestant and there are only two common ingredients, phenylephrine and pseudoephedrine. The former is available on the shelf and for the latter, you have to ask the pharmacy staff for pseudoephedrine. This is one of the ingredients highly sought after for illegal methamphetamine production so it is now only sold from behind the pharmacy counter and you may have to sign for it.
Which is better? Pseudoephedrine is far superior to phenylephrine so it is worth asking for it
For cough symptoms you need to decide if you want to loosen a cough or suppress it. I recommend loosening a cough only in daytime and using a cough suppressant overnight for better sleeping.
Guiafenesin is the best common expectorant for loosening a cough and sold under the brand name Mucinex© and also in plain Robitussin© cough syrup. Dextromethorphan is the best OTC cough suppressant and is found in many products and often identified in the label with the abbreviation DM. So you can take Mucinex-DM or Robitussin-DM or countless others. But consider what you are trying to do with the combo products. On one hand you are trying to loosen the cough with the guiafenesin and on the other hand you are trying to suppress the cough with the DM ingredient. Does that make any sense to you? It does not make sense to me.
The fifth ingredient in many products is an antihistamine. Common ones are chlorpheniramine and brompheniramine. They are not really very useful for cold symptoms, however they can help with allergy symptoms, which is what they were designed for in the first place.
So to summarize -
Phenylephrine - weak decongestant
Pseudoephedrine - stronger decongestant
Guiafenesin - expectorant for loosening a cough
Dextromethorphan - cough suppressant
antihistamines - not really very useful
There are new FDA rules out for what is safe for children under 2 so my comments on these ingredients are primarily for older children and adults.
Then I often get asked how to kill the infection. Stay tuned.....
drBob
PS - if you are not a subscriber to my email list, consider signing up using either my RSS feed (upper right) or join the email list (left hand column)