Hi, there I’m Dan Henderson. I’m a primary care doctor at NHS UK. I’m here to talk to you today about colds and coughs and all the things that get us during the winter. It just so happens that I have a cold today kind of a nasty one. I want to tell you about what you can expect with colds how to manage them and when to seek help. Colds are rarely serious sometimes they can be a problem for people who are older or people who have serious health conditions especially lung conditions. But for most of us, colds are just a part of life this is probably the first I’ve gotten this year. Colds are almost always things that go away on their own you really want to just treat the symptoms.
That’s what today I am going to talk about can you get rid of cold in 24 hours and how? Yes, you can because I did it. There is another approach if you don’t like taking medicine and more like a natural supplement. That would be another blog post you can read it here how to get rid of a cold in 24 hours? Now everyone reacts differently to colds and there are hundreds maybe more of different viruses that cause them. So it’s hard to give specific instructions about what will help. Some of it is trial and error but today we’re going to talk a little bit about how to manage your symptoms. When to get help? So this cold started for me about five days ago. The first thing I noticed was kind of a dry scratchy feeling in the top and back of my throat and then I started to have a lot of nasal congestion. Then I kind of got a sore throat and now I’m starting to have a lot of coughs.
I’ve got discomfort in my chest wall from all the coughing all my muscles are sore from all the coughing. I have a tired wife who I’ve been keeping up all night and so these are kind of the symptoms and as I said for everyone it’s a little bit different. But you want to target your symptoms so at the start of the cold I did a couple of things. Because I have a lot of nasal congestion I wanted to take care of that. So I picked up this product called the Neilmed® Sinus Rinse™. I recommend this to a lot of my patients because it works really well. You flush that stuff out of your sinuses and helps keep things flowing and it helps reduce the inflammation. It doesn’t feel great but it works really well and a lot of people really like it.
The other thing I picked up which I don’t have with me today is a nasal steroid nasal spray like Flonase or fluticasone or Nasonex or Nasacort. Any of those will do they’re usually available over-the-counter. But you can also get them through a prescription from your primary care office that helps to decrease all the inflammation. Again kind of just keep things going because the worst thing that can happen with the nose symptoms is that all of the excess mucus that the virus produces just gets stuck there and that’s how you get a sinus infection.
How you just feel very unwell now the other thing I’ve been doing is trying to stay well hydrated to keep everything flowing. I’ve been blowing my nose a lot. Sometimes when people want to avoid having to blow their nose they’ll take medications to dry up. The secretions sudafed or pseudoephedrine or fennel Efrain is one of the main ones. The only downside of that is that when the secretions get more dried up for some people they can be more kind of stubborn and sticky and some people prefer to just keep blowing their nose until it passes. So mine did pass but then I started to have more kind of sore throat. So I picked up just some basic lozenges these have honey. So I like them but honestly, I probably prefer the cheaper ones.
I also was taking a regular over-the-counter anti-inflammatory pain medication like Tylenol or ibuprofen or naproxen just to help with kind of the general aches and pains. So now we’re getting into kind of the chest symptoms. My patients always say to me you know it started up here and then moved into my chest and that is kind of what happens. Because the viruses that inflect infect the respiratory tract can infect all kinds of cells along the way. So sometimes they start in one place but they’re causing inflammation all over which eventually takes hold in other places. Now like I mentioned I’m having a lot of coffee not too much right now. which is why I’ve got my mask off and so I picked up a medication that includes the ingredient dextromethorphan that’s a cough suppressant and it helps me not have to cough so much.
When I take a breath in my air get a little irritated and want to some people also will pick up medications that contain an ingredient called wife Emison. Which we know from the commercials from mucinex that can help some people for others it may not. But dextromethorphan is definitely a good option to reduce the need to cough or the reactivity that you feel. You do want to be very careful I have seen people overdose on this by taking too much and that causes confusion and weird symptoms to always take it as the box directs.
Then for some people who have maybe mild asthma inhalers or things like that can be helpful and also just kind of taking it easy. Making sure that you’re staying well hydrated getting enough rest getting enough to eat so that’s what I’m doing for this right now. One of the things I tell people is that when you go to the coffin cold aisle there are like 200 different medications there and there are all different combinations. I recommend knowing the ingredients that you want to get in this case dextromethorphan and focusing on that rather than getting combinations. It does get more expensive especially if you don’t pay attention to the cost per pill. But when you take a combination medication you’re at risk for getting something that you don’t want or for double dosing on something especially things like acetaminophen or Tylenol which at very high levels can be dangerous but is totally safe at regular doses. So if you follow the guidelines then you can even get rid of a cold in 24 hours.
How to Get Rid of a Cold in 24 Hours 