In the clinic, you often see some familiar faces. Often, children have a fever and cough for a few days and then they cough again; or the cough starts to ease and then recurs; or it starts to ease significantly and then suddenly gets worse and coughs incessantly. So what is it about coughing that makes it so good and so bad that it never ends? Here is a list of the more common clinical causes.
1. Recurrent respiratory tract infections
This is the most common cause of recurrent coughs. In autumn and winter, the dry, cold air reduces the body’s ability to fight disease in the respiratory tract, so respiratory infections begin to increase. And as the number of people with respiratory infections increases, so do the sources of infection and the chances of cross-infection. There are often children who have a cold and cough and then start coughing again in less than a week after being sent to kindergarten. This is because the child’s immune system is weak when the illness is just over, and many of the children go to kindergarten with the illness, causing cross-infection and coughing again. There are also children who have just recovered from a minor illness, but after eating for a few days, their stools don’t pass, and they get a fever and cough after accumulating food.
How can I avoid it?
It is not very practical to avoid recurrent coughs completely, but it is possible to reduce their occurrence by paying attention to the following points.
1) It is best to stay home when you are sick and not go to school or kindergarten with your illness.
2) When you are first recovering from the disease, go to less or no crowded public places and do not eat or eat less meat and fish.
3) Drink more water and have daily bowel movements.
2. Insufficient treatment course for allergic cough or asthma
Many parents are still concerned about the hormonal component of nebulizer treatment and always reduce or stop the medication after the cough has subsided. If your child is diagnosed with allergic cough or cough variant asthma or wheezing bronchitis or bronchial asthma, your doctor gives nebulizer inhalation treatment. This treatment often lasts for a long time and sometimes it is necessary to continue the nebulizer treatment for a while after the cough symptoms are completely relieved before stopping the medication. If the drug is stopped as soon as the cough is relieved, it is easy to cause a recurrent cough that does not heal, i.e., the cough stops nebulizing just a little, and the cough is aggravated soon after stopping nebulizing, in nebulizing. In fact, the cough will be prolonged for a longer period of time and the nebulized inhaled medication will be more expensive.
How to avoid the occurrence: Do not stop the medication on your own, but reduce or stop the medication under the guidance of your doctor. Start nebulized inhalation treatment when coughing and asthma attack, it is better to follow up once in 3-4 days and ask the doctor to guide the medication.
3. Encounter with stimulating factors
Clinically, we often encounter situations where the child’s starts to get significantly better and feel that the disease has gotten better, and the child’s starts to suddenly get worse again, starting very frequently, and the parents do not understand the reason and become more worried and nervous. What are the factors that may cause a cough to ease and suddenly worsen?
1) Cold air: Cough relief, stimulated by dry and cold air outdoors, especially on windy days, often induces a very violent cough. This is especially likely to happen in children with sensitive airways or asthma.
In this case, it is best to wear a mask if you take your child outside to avoid the direct stimulation of the cold air.
2) Strenuous exercise: Your child has just recovered from a cough, but after holding it at home for a few days, he or she goes out for an hour to run around and play basketball, then comes back and coughs again at night.
When a child has just recovered from an illness, do not let the child immediately engage in more strenuous exercise. Do not rush the child to quickly resume exercise classes such as fast running, soccer, skiing, ice skating, etc. Outdoor sports are fine, but in a gradual manner.
3) Newly purchased clothes: If your child’s cough suddenly worsens and no other possible triggers can be found, and it just so happens that the child or adult has changed into new clothes, the clothes are a very suspicious factor.
4) Newly purchased toys: Especially stuffed toys, or toys with a smell, are often the culprit for triggering a cough.
5) There is also the humidifier used in the home. Some families use humidifiers, but some humidifiers emit a mist of water containing fine particles that are the cause of cough triggers. It is important to pay attention to the choice of humidifier, the choice of water quality, and the cleanliness of the humidifier. Improper use of humidifiers is harmful.