Most children have a cough, and coughing often touches the nerves of parents. Some children cough occasionally, but often do not get better for ten days and a half months, some children cough constantly, and coughing powerfully will also vomit; some children cough all night, tossing and turning, children sad parents more sad, all kinds of different coughs, so parents are at a loss. We hope that the following questions can give parents some help.
Why do children cough?
First of all, from a TCM point of view, coughing is closely related to the lungs and can be caused by abnormalities in the lung Qi for a variety of reasons. Children’s lungs are the most delicate and are easily affected by the external environment, so they are prone to coughing.
At the same time, the immaturity of all the internal organs in children and the improper functioning of other organs can also affect the normal work of the lungs and cause coughing.
How can different types of cough be distinguished?
The causes of cough are generally divided into external causes, i.e. external sensations; and internal causes, i.e. internal injuries. The external causes are mainly the abnormal weather in the four seasons, the sudden changes in weather that the body cannot adjust to cope with, and the different constitutions of children, thus showing different cough conditions. If the cough shows cold manifestations such as itchy throat and white and clear sputum, it is a wind-cold cough; if it is accompanied by hot manifestations such as yellow and sticky sputum, thirst and sore throat, fever and sweating, it is a wind-heat cough; the internal causes are mainly phlegm, dryness and deficiency If a child has a cough with yellow phlegm, accompanied by a thick yellow tongue coating, etc., it is a phlegm-heat cough; if the cough has white phlegm, chest tightness, poor appetite, mental sleepiness, and a thick white tongue coating, it is a phlegm-damp cough; dryness is a manifestation of having fire without water; the lungs are like a tent full of air, and if there is fire and water, the tent is a mass of hot air. If there is fire but no water, the tent will be burnt, and if there is water but no fire, the tent cannot be held up. Dry cough is characterized by a cough with little phlegm, sticky and difficult to cough, and heat in the hands and feet. Children who have been sick for a long time or who are congenitally deficient will also have coughs that do not heal for a long time due to a lack of lung energy, which manifests itself in weaknesses such as a weak cough, shortness of breath and lazy speech.
How to treat different coughs at home?
Cough is the most common symptom of every child. Some parents give their children iced sugar pear, some drink Sichuan peel, and some take cold and cough medicine as soon as they see a cough, but it is not always effective, so how should a child’s cough be treated and cared for simply? We hope that with the following introduction, we can learn to simply determine what kind of cough your child has and treat it accordingly.
First of all, most of the initial coughs in children are due to cold, some are not covered at night, some are sweating, some do not increase or decrease their clothes due to weather changes, these coughs are accompanied by a clear runny nose, the child is afraid of cold, even fever, the strong body does not sweat, the weak body sweats, at this time at home care can use white onion and ginger soup, add brown sugar, the weak body uses less white onion, more brown sugar, the strong body white onion More use. But one of the things to note is that if the child plays with a sweat and then catches a cold, pay attention, do not use too much white onion and drink more thin gruel, otherwise the cough is not easy to get well and can easily hurt the lungs.
We judge from the time of coughing.
If a child coughs only during the day and not at night, most children will have a poor appetite and do not want to eat. While treating the cough, pay attention to dietary control, eat hot and soft food and eat less, so that the lungs can be well after the spleen and stomach are adjusted. On the other hand, some children have a cough mainly at night but not during the day, and they are in good spirits and have a good appetite. This cough usually lasts for a longer period of time and is related to the injury of lung yin. There are also some conditions that can cause a cough that does not heal over time, such as Mycoplasma pneumoniae infection, allergies, allergic rhinitis, asthma that is not well controlled, sinusitis, etc. These also require further treatment of the primary cause.
In addition, many children have recurrent whistling infections, most of which are related to their lung and spleen deficiencies. These children are thin, white, some are anemic, have poor appetite, are picky eaters, sweat easily, sleep restlessly, grind their teeth at night, etc. They should first strengthen their health and regulate their spleen and stomach in order to avoid recurrent coughs. As the saying goes, earth produces gold, the spleen and stomach are earth and the lungs are gold, so a child with a poor spleen and stomach will not have strong lungs.
When should I send my child to the hospital?
Cough is a relatively common condition in children, and in many cases it is not necessary to send the child to the hospital immediately. However, parents must pay attention to the following cases and seek medical attention in time to avoid delaying the condition
The child’s voice suddenly becomes hoarse when coughing, or he or she cannot make a sound. This is often caused by sudden inflammation and edema in the child’s larynx, and in severe cases, it can easily cause difficulty in whistling or even suffocation, so it is important to go to the hospital to ensure adequate oxygen supply. The child’s mouth and lips are blue. A blue mouth and lips means that the child has become hypoxic. Severe pneumonia, asthma and foreign bodies sucked inside the trachea can cause hypoxia, which can be dangerous, so it is important to go to the hospital. Although small babies do not have a strong cough, if they do not eat milk and spit up foam, it also means that there is more serious inflammation in the lungs and should be checked in the hospital.
Finally, a longer recurrent cough that is not relieved by multiple medications should also be examined at the hospital to clarify the cause.
Is there any way to treat my child’s cough without medication?
Some children have difficulty taking medicine, and parents often say that every time they feed medicine, they cry and sweat, and the whole family doesn’t feed in a few mouthfuls of medicine, so is there any way to get rid of the medicine? Here is a brief introduction to several methods, but also after years of verification of the effect of reliable methods.
External treatment.
At present, pharmacies have a variety of cough patches, which are applied to acupuncture points for unblocking the meridians and dispersing wind evils, with good results, and can generally be applied to external coughs. The key acupuncture points should be well chosen, generally there are several commonly used acupuncture points, the Tiantu point is located in the sunken upper end of the sternum; Tanzhong is located at the midpoint of the line between the two nipples; Lung acupoint is located in the space between the two scapulae and the crest of the back. Apply cough patches to these areas and the child will easily cooperate.
Tui-na treatment.
Parents can master some common tui-na methods to reduce their child’s pain and avoid the side effects of internal medicine. Press and knead the end of the index finger for 3 minutes to clear the lungs; press and knead the large and small fissures for 3 minutes each to resolve phlegm; push the Tiantu point to the Tanzhong point for 3 minutes to broaden the middle and resolve phlegm; press and knead the lung acupoints on both sides for 3 minutes each to regulate lung qi. In addition, parents can dip their fingers in ginger juice during massage to enhance the effect of massage.
How to understand cough correctly?
When a child has a cough for various reasons, the first thing parents think of is to stop the cough. As long as the child does not cough, parents will think it is effective, but in fact, this understanding is not comprehensive. We need to have a deeper understanding of cough in order to prevent our children from being harmed by our inadvertence and to allow them to receive the correct treatment and medication.
First of all, the human whistling tract has a self-cleaning effect.
Everything outside that irritates the whistle can cause a cough, which is the self-cleaning and protective role of the whistle. The whistle has to get rid of these outside things, and coughing can take them out of the body. So when we see a child coughing we first need to understand this and then determine how to deal with it. If it is just a foreign body choking, after a short cough, the foreign body will be removed and the cough will stop. If there is inflammation in the respiratory tract, coughing facilitates the discharge of inflammatory secretions. Many parents will say that their children do not spit at all, but there is no need to worry about this. Parents will notice that after a coughing fit, there is a swallowing action in which the child swallows the phlegm that he or she has coughed up into the throat and then enters the gastrointestinal tract for digestion and discharge, so coughing facilitates disease recovery, or coughing is a means for the organism to recover itself.
Therefore, we must not use too many cough suppressants in these cases.
These drugs only inhibit the child’s coughing nerve reflex, so that the whistling tract does not respond to foreign bodies and inflammation, and there is no coughing naturally, which is actually not conducive to disease recovery, but rather a proper cough is more conducive to disease healing. In some cases, when the cough is abnormally violent, affecting the child’s sleep and normal life, or when there is no foreign body or inflammation in the whistle at all, but the body’s nervous reflexes are abnormal causing the coughing impulse to occur by mistake, in these cases cough suppressants can be used appropriately under the guidance of the doctor, which can improve the child’s quality of life and thus facilitate the recovery of the disease. Therefore, the cough does not have to be stopped immediately to be good, parents must establish the correct understanding in order to avoid incorrect medication and treatment.