Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Cure for cough
Last night at about 3 AM, I got up and searched the web for information on cough suppressants. No surprise to your humble servant (who had repeatedly hit the bottles — non-narcotic antitussives, narcotic syrups, and booze), prescription drugs don’t help. My web sources recommend two things, one obvious and one surprising.
The obvious one: honey. Many of the remedies on this page use honey. Lemon combined with white or black pepper, that’s another popular one. And of course honey and lemon together.
The surprising one: dark chocolate.
In a cough suppressant study performed by London’s National Heart and Lung Institute, chocolate’s theobromine significantly outperformed codeine, the primary active ingredient in prescription cough medicine. Participants in the study were treated at different times with a placebo, codeine, and theobromine before being exposed to capsaicin via an inhaled gas. Capsaicin, a chili pepper derivative, has long been used to induce coughing in clinical research.
As a cough medicine, codeine (mostly known as a painkiller) had nominal success compared to the placebo, but theobromine was 33 percent more effective than codeine to stop coughing. Theobromine was found to work directly on the vagus nerve, which is responsible for triggering coughing.
The article points out that codeine isn’t terribly safe (you shouldn’t drive afterward, nor operate heavy machinery), while chocolate is perfectly safe. Well, not “perfectly” safe — those of us who suffer from reflux learn to fear chocolate for its pro-reflux properties.
And so the dilemma. If I do nothing, the cough will keep me up. If I dose up on narcotic cough syrup, the narcotics will give me insomnia and I’ll still cough my lungs out. If I dose up on chocolate, I won’t cough, but the reflux might keep me up.
I’m going to take my chances with chocolate. It has worked well for me all day, so hopefully it’ll serve me well tonight, too. And maybe I’ll take some honey for good measure.
What’s your favorite cough cure?
D.
Jack Daniels.
Like I told you, it’s the honey, small doses.
Jaeger. Ooh, HONEY Jaeger (yes there’s such a thing). When I first fell in love with Jaegermeister, I went online to find out what on earth was in it. I found that it had started out as a cough syrup. WOOT. 😀
also hot tea with honey and lemon. yeah.
Shaina, you boozehound.
It sounds like alcoholic Ricola 🙂
I don’t like honey! Blecht. If I get a productive cough, I’ll take a hit off the ventolin inhaler and then a Fisherman’s Friend. If it’s a dry, scratchy cough I find a cup of hot lemon or lime (sans honey) and a Fisherman’s Friend works, too. A sore throaty cough needs a gargle with warm salted water followed by Listerine gargle and an ibuprofen. All ills are aided by a stint in the sauna. Sweat it all out.