Cough drops are a temporary solution for a bothersome cough, so stop taking them today! You’re getting more hurt than benefit from them.
After the congestion and weariness of a cold or flu pass, does your cough continue to linger for several days or even weeks? Cease immediately if you are using cough drops to relieve and quiet your cough.
When patients visited Dr. Bob Mead for help with a persistent cough, they frequently informed him they weren’t taking any medication for it and would instead pop a cough drop. A few individuals were consuming twenty drops daily! He advised them to cease the cough drops and observe the outcome based on a gut feeling. The cough usually went away in a day or two.
In order to conduct a study, Dr. Mead approached the Wisconsin Research and Education Network (WREN). Their study supported Dr. Mead’s observation, and it was published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. More than 500 patients from Wisconsin clinics in rural, suburban, and urban areas were evaluated by WREN.
More menthol causes more coughing, the study found. The menthol started a rebound effect, whereby it initially relieved the cough but soon turned into an irritant that made the cough worse. Varying levels of menthol are present in cough drops; others contain none at all. It didn’t matter how much menthol was in the drops; what mattered was how much you absorbed over the day. A few really high-level menthol cough drops might be just as harmful as twenty low-level ones.
This study concentrated on patients with coughs that were nonproductive (did not produce phlegm) and that felt like a “tickle in the throat.” The patients also did not have a fever.
During our conversation, I informed Dr. Mead about my persistent cough and that I was using ten or more cough drops daily, frequently coughing while the drop was in my mouth! As soon as I read the article, I had stopped using the cough pills.
“What was that?” he inquired.
“Two days ago,” was my reply.
“Did you cough more than yesterday?”
“Yes, it was, but today was much better.”
“It takes a day or so for the menthol to leave your body; that’s the rebound effect.”
Naturally, the study did not take into account any underlying causes of the cough, as Dr. Mead pointed out. Asthma, COPD, and other medical conditions may cause coughs that react to menthol very differently.
Now, what advice does Dr. Mead provide his patients? Be patient, and if the coughing is too bothersome, dexamethasone-containing cough syrups are frequently good at stopping it.
The Wisconsin Research and Education Network (WREN), which has its main office in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s department of family medicine and community health, carried out the study.
