Herbs For Kids - Aviva Romm

21
Cough
It’s a common story. Your child has had a cold for a few days and now he’s started having a cough.
It’s midnight and you’ve been asleep for just about an hour when you hear coughing coming from his
bedroom. You know he’s having an uncomfortable night, and the coughing isn’t letting you get much
sleep either. You get up and bring him some water, and it seems to help for awhile, but then the coughing
starts again. This is the second night in a row you’ve both been kept awake by his cough. You’ve heard
that over-the-counter cough syrups aren’t really safe or effective for kids, but you both need some sleep.
What can you do?
What is a Cough?
A cough is a reaction to airway irritation or inflammation, usually caused by viral upper respiratory
infection (also called a cold) or something in the environment, commonly dust. Other problems such as
asthma and reflux can also cause coughs. For now we’ll focus only on coughs due to colds.
Coughs can last from days to even weeks. In fact, you might have noticed that sometimes after a cold,
a child can have a lingering cough for even six weeks. This can be completely normal and is due to
irritation in the upper airway passages that may just take this long to resolve.
What Can You Do?
There are many common treatments for cough. A few that I recommend regularly in my practice include:
• Encourage plenty of fluids, especially water, hot tea, bouillon broth, and miso broth (available at
Whole Foods and most natural food coops, this is a delicious paste made of fermented soy beans
that is loaded with live, active enzymes).
• Vick’s ® VapoRub ® applied to the chest (not to the face!) has actually been shown to help children
with coughs (and as a benefit, their parents!) sleep better.
• Place a humidifier in your child’s room to help moisten the air
and loosen the cough (to avoid burns. (Do not place a hot water
humidifier anywhere near your child).
While medications are
• For kids older than two years, honey has been shown to be lifesaving when needed,
more effective and safer than cough syrups for relieving
cough. Either let your child take ½-1 tsp of honey directly
when overprescribed
from a spoon or mix into tea. NOTE: The honey has to be and misused they can
good quality honey which a recent study showed could only
be purchased from Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and natural,
contribute to health
organic food sources. Honey in regular supermarkets is not of problems, environmental
adequate quality.
• Over-the-counter cough medications should be completely
contamination, and the
avoided in children under five and are not recommended for deadly international
children of any age.
• Antibiotics do not treat coughs caused by viral infections and
are almost always not indicated for coughs due to colds.
problem of antibiotic
resistance…