7 Ways to Stop Coughing
No one likes a lingering cough. Luckily, there are ways to get rid of it.
Coughs suck—and they tend to stick around longer than other cold symptoms. A 2013 study found the average cough lasts 18 days. That’s a long time to be hacking up phlegm.
"Coughing is a symptom rather than a diagnosis," says Philip Chen, MD, otolaryngologist at the the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. "There are many reasons a person can suffer with cough and while there are remedies that can improve the cough, they don’t typically treat the cause of cough."
Since most adults' coughs are due to the common cold, which is caused by a virus (not bacteria), antibiotics won't help the situation. Cough medicine also typically doesn't work, according to multiple studies.
With that in mind, there are still some ways to get relief from coughing. Here are just a few of them.
"If your cough doesn’t go away (or at least improve significantly) after 7 days," says Dr. Chen. If you also have difficulty breathing of wheezing, it's time to get checked. Other serious symptoms include severe body aches, a fever over 101, rash, difficulty swallowing, or chest pain.
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