A nasty cold can linger for weeks. You feel exhausted and worse, you can’t seem to stop coughing. The cough starts with a little tickle in the throat, and before you know it, you’ll be coughing for 10 minutes or more. You cough in a store and people immediately turn away from you. How can you get rid of cough?

First, you need to understand that coughing helps remove mucus from the throat. A tried and true cough remedy is to stand in a hot shower and breathe in the steam. If you don’t want to shower, hold your head over a pan of boiling water. However, don’t keep your head too close.

Honey is an old folk remedy for coughs. In a website article, “Honey: An Effective Cough Remedy?” The Mayo Clinic says that eating honey can suppress coughs. However, you should be careful when giving honey to a child. “Never give honey to a child under one year old,” advises the Mayo Clinic.

A WebMD article, “Cough: Topic Overview,” divides cough into productive and non-productive. A productive cough is the one you get with a common cold. “Coughing is often triggered by mucus draining from the back of the throat,” the article states. A productive cough removes mucus from the lungs. But an unproductive cough doesn’t clear mucus and “can develop toward the end of a cold or after exposure to an irritant, such as dust or smoke.”

Over-the-counter cough syrup can also help you get rid of a cough. You should not take this syrup if you have asthma, emphysema, or excessive mucus in your throat. According to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), you should check the active ingredients in cough syrup before taking it. Cough syrup often contains several active ingredients: a decongestant, a cough suppressant, an expectorant, a pain reliever, and a fever reducer.

Look for Pseudoephidrene on the ingredient list, a stimulant that dries out the nose and throat. Side effects of this ingredient include nervousness, dizziness, and insomnia. As I discovered, this ingredient can also raise blood pressure and cause the heart to beat very fast.

My husband and I were going out to dinner. Because I had a persistent cough, I took some cough medicine and drank a cup of coffee to cheer me up. I had a glass of wine with dinner and coffee afterwards. Suddenly my heart raced and I started to feel weak. I later found out that this reaction was caused by the pseudoephedrine in the cough syrup.

Tablespoons and teaspoons very broadly, according to the FDA, so you should only use the measuring cup or spoon that comes with the cough syrup. Keep in mind that cough medicine does not treat the underlying cause of the cough. See your doctor if your cough persists for weeks, develops bronchitis, pneumonia, or starts coughing up blood. Colds are no fun, but they eventually go away.

Copyright 2010 by Harriet Hodgson