“It’s not the cough that carries you off…”
Listen…
If you have a persistent cough that’s keeping you awake at night…
This could be just what you need to read!
You see…
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a massively irritating cough.
Not just irritating for me.
Irritating for everyone else in the house too!
Cough! Cough! Cough! Cough! Cough!
And cough!
And here’s another…
Cough!
At night, every time my head hit the pillow…
Persistently coughing!
So I tried the usual remedies…
- Honey.
- Lemon.
- Cough medicine.
But nothing seemed to work.
It came to the crunch when my wife sent me downstairs.
“I haven’t slept a wink with all that coughing”, she goaned.
“And you’re going to awaken eveyone else in the house!”
So the wee small hours saw me sitting on the settee, reading a book, eating toast and drinking honey & lemon once again.
No chance of sleep.
At 4am, I hit Facebook.
Well sometimes you have to resort to extreme measures, don’t you.
It’s great to have friends who’ll offer their advice, especially when you most need it.
And they came up with some great remedies.
Here they are…
- One desert-spoon-full of honey, followed by another desert-spoon-full with the head tilted back, so that as much of the inner throat is eased as is possible.
- Upgrade to Manuka 10+ honey because it has natural anti-biotic properties.
- Honey on toast in the morning.
- Lemsip with honey.
- Pineapple juice.
- Rub Vicks Vapour Rub into the soles of your feet.
- Put a good blob of Vicks on your finger and lick it off.
- Friars Balsam.
- Butter, sugar and vinegar.
Isn’t it great to have helpful friends with lots of ideas to try.
Well, I tried most of these remedies.
Dollops of Manuka 10+ honey… I hope my dentist doesn’t shout at me for consuming large quantities of honey during the night (but not cleaning my teeth afterwards).
I rubbed the Vick into the feet… but declined the licking from the finger remedy.
I bought a different bottle of linctus which was recommended by the chemist for dry coughs.
And I popped a couple of Night-Nurse capsules.
As comforting as each of these was, none cured the pesky cough.
It remained as persistent as ever.
So around 2am one night, again I went to Google.
And typed into the search box the simple phrase:
“I cough when I lie down”.
Funny, isn’t it.
Google wants to know exactly how you are.
Very specifically.
And then it delivers.
Surely there’s an encouragement in there for the SEO gurus.
Anyway, this time it gave me another tip:
“Raise the head of your bed slightly, perhaps by placing pillows or blankets under the mattress.”
Hah! I’d nothing to lose if this didn’t work. But it was a last resort and I was pinning my hopes on it.
Now… by this time, this barker had been confined to the little box room we use as an office.
The guest bed could be just about squeezed into the room.
And that was now my current cosy accommodation.
So carefully I folded and stuffed a blanket beneath the mattress, raising the head of the mattress by 2 or 3 inches.
And tried to settle again.
For the first time in several days, I managed to grab some sleep.
There were a few moments when I awoke…
“Bark, bark…”
“No, we don’t have a dog. It must be me again!”
And then, with an adjustment back to the elevated position…
(No, I’m not into that levitation stuff. I meant lying at an angle!)
… Eventually sleep returned.
The following night I added another blanket for a second wedge.
And apart from the occasional “bark, bark”, followed by a re-position and a swig of cough-medicine, I caught up on a bit more sleep.
Hey! It’s not the miracle cure (even though the title of this blog post made you think it is).
But it has made a big difference.
So…
If all the traditional remedies fail…
And all the old-wives-tales remedies fail…
Try Doctor Google’s elevation remedy.
It might be just what you need to bring some sleep and sanity back into your life.
Are there any unusual or off-the-wall remedies that have worked for you? Please leave a comment in the box below because I’d love to know.
A fun post that. Cough mixture doesn’t do anything. The best remedy is rest and water. Coughing is actually good for you. It’s your bodies way of removing the contaminant and fighting infection. The cause is either bronchitis (viral) or pneumonia (bacteria). The latter can be treated with antibiotics. By drinking water you reduce or dilute the amount of phlegm. Paracetamol helps with the inevitable headaches a cough causes and reduces your temperature. So in the end water and rest is what you need if you have a cough caused by a chest infection.
Thanks Kevin. Great advice. I love how, in the end, it’s the completely natural remedies that work the best… and cost nothing.