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 your throat, and before you know it, you’ll be coughing for 10 minutes or more. You cough in a store and people immediately walk away from you. How can you get rid of cough?

First, you need to understand that coughing helps to clear mucus from the throat. A tried and true remedy for a cough 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 cough remedy. In a website article, “Honey: An Effective Cough Remedy?” Mayo Clinic says that eating honey can suppress a cough. However, you should be careful when giving honey to a child. “Never give honey to a child under one year of age,” advises the Mayo Clinic.

A WebMD article, “Cough: Topic Overview,” divides coughs into productive and non-productive. A productive cough is the kind you get with a common cold. “Coughing is often triggered by mucus draining down the back of the throat,” the article notes. A productive cough clears mucus from the lungs. But an unproductive cough doesn’t clear mucus and “may 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 get rid of your 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 the cough syrup before taking it. Cough syrup often contains several active ingredients: a decongestant, cough suppressant, expectorant, pain reliever, and 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 found out, this ingredient can also raise your blood pressure and make your heart beat very fast.

My husband and I were going out to dinner. Because I had a persistent cough, I took a cough medicine and drank a cup of coffee to cheer myself up. I had a glass of wine with dinner and coffee afterwards. Suddenly my heart raced and I started to feel weak. Later, I 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 medicines do not treat the underlying cause of your cough. See your doctor if your cough persists for weeks, you develop bronchitis, pneumonia, or start coughing up blood. Colds aren’t fun, but they do go away eventually.

Copyright 2010 by Harriet Hodgson