1. Coughing is a defense of the body
When it comes to coughing, it is important to first understand whether coughing is a good or bad thing. Coughs are divided into dry coughs and wet coughs from a performance point of view. A dry cough is a cough without phlegm. It is often an irritating cough, such as when you have laryngitis, suddenly smell a particularly strong odor, after crying, or inhale a foreign body, which is a stimulus to the upper respiratory tract and can trigger a cough. A wet cough is a cough with phlegm, a cough that discharges secretions to the outside.
Whether it is a dry cough or a wet cough, it is a defense mechanism of the body. So coughing is in most cases a good thing, not a bad thing. As the second mother said, when you see your child coughing, you feel more comfortable, which means that your child is getting better.
Our respiratory system has mucous membranes on its surface, and all mucous membranes have secretory glands, which increase their secretion when they are stimulated. So, no matter what the cause of the cough is, the secretion will eventually appear, which means that it will definitely end up in a wet cough. After the third mother’s child cried out, the cough that appeared at first must have been a dry cough, but later became a wet cough because the respiratory tract was irritated and produced secretions, so the mother thought it was an infection, but it was not.
The mucous membrane of the respiratory tract has many villi, and when the mucous membrane is stimulated to produce secretions, the villi will swing faster in order to push the secretions out of the body, and in the process of swinging outward, it will prompt the respiration to speed up, and the airflow will be rapidly discharged outward, and a cough will appear. Coughing is a defense of the human body, and a child’s coughing means that his defense is normal in the first place. Those children who don’t cough but get pneumonia have poorer body defenses instead because there are already a lot of secretions in the lungs and he fails to cough them up, so don’t think that your child’s cough is a bad thing.
2. Coughing means mucous membrane damage that needs to be repaired
If a child coughs frequently, it means that the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract has a problem and is in a hypersensitive state. We normal people will cough when we encounter irritation. However, if the mucous membrane has been damaged, or if it has not been repaired after damage, it becomes very fragile and reacts to the slightest stimulus, making it especially easy to cough. Take the analogy of bottled mineral water, the water represents the child and the bottle represents the respiratory tract.
When the bottle has a cap, no matter how you shake the water will not come out. But if the cap falls off, the water will come out when it is shaken slightly. This does not mean that there is a problem with the water, but with the bottle, that is, the mucous membrane is damaged.
The villi of the respiratory tract wiggle a lot, which can also cause damage to the mucosa. After the damage, there is a recovery process. In the case of a mineral water bottle, the cap falls off and another cap is found to cover it, which is repair. As you can see, there are three steps to coughing: the factors that irritate the respiratory mucosa, the process of coughing, and the repair after coughing.
Some parents say that their children don’t have a fever anymore, but why is the cough not getting better? Actually, it is the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract being repaired. Fever is an infection of viruses and bacteria, which attach to the surface of the respiratory tract and irritate the mucous membrane, which then secretes a secretion that can fight against viruses and bacteria. Therefore, the fever is a process in which the body uses its immune system.
When the fever stops, it means that the virus and bacteria have been subdued by the immune system, and the replication of the virus and bacteria in the body no longer continues, and the body’s immune system has taken over. At this time, the mucous membranes of the nose, throat, trachea and bronchi begin to discharge germs outward, and this process is also a kind of stimulation, so the child does not have a fever anymore, but instead begins to cough and secretions increase.
3. Deep cough vs. shallow cough
A child’s cough is divided into a shallow cough and a deep cough. A shallow cough and a deep cough have different parts and are different in nature. So, how do you distinguish between shallow and deep coughs?
(1) A shallow cough is short and sharp
A shallow cough is usually in the throat, while a deep cough is in the trachea, bronchi or lungs, and sounds like it is coming from the chest. One easy feature that distinguishes shallow cough from deep cough is whether the sound of a cough is long or short. A shallow cough has a fast frequency and sounds short, while a deep cough is relatively long.
(2) More phlegm, more nasal discharge and more shallow coughs are predominant
Never judge whether a child has a shallow or deep cough by the amount of secretions. Because our entire respiratory system, from the nose and throat to the trachea and lungs, is full of secretory glands, there will be secretions in both shallow and deep coughs. Moreover, often a shallow cough makes us think that the child is more seriously ill, has a lot of phlegm, and when he coughs, he brings out some phlegm and has a lot of snot, but in fact the situation is just the opposite.
A child with a lot of phlegm and a runny nose has a shallow cough because it is easier to cough out the secretions from the upper respiratory tract and the condition is not serious. A deep cough, on the other hand, is a cough that is not serious because the child is often unable to cough up the phlegm because the area is down. At this time, you may feel that your child is coughing hard or does not feel relaxed after coughing, and this is when the condition is more serious.
(3) A shallow cough that does not cough during the day and coughs at night
Another obvious way to tell if your child has a shallow cough is that he or she tends to cough very little during the day, mainly with a runny nose, but coughs more at night. This is because when the child is lying flat, the throat is in a low position and the secretions in the nasal cavity cannot be discharged through the process of running nose, so they flow backwards into the throat, stimulating the throat and causing coughing, making the child often wake up at night with a cough, making parents think that the child’s condition has worsened, when in fact it has not. Some children even cough more heavily during the day and less heavily at night, so children with deep coughs can sleep well instead.
4. Red and swollen throat is not always a bacterial infection
Careful parents may find that their children’s throats are red and swollen when they cough. They worry that their children have inflammation, so they want to use antibiotics to reduce inflammation. A red and swollen throat with inflammation does not mean it is a bacterial infection. Inflammation is a big concept and bacterial infection is only a small part of it, and inflammation and bacterial infection are not equivalent.
What does inflammation mean? Inflammation is characterized by redness, swelling, heat and pain. The local area of inflammation will be red, swollen, painful and even locally hot, just like a boil on the body, no matter the boil is big or small, the local area will be swollen and a little painful and hot to touch, which is a bacterial infection; if a local area is traumatized, there will also be a local inflammatory reaction of redness, swelling and heat, but it is not a bacterial infection. Viruses stimulate the respiratory tract leading to coughing and throat redness, and the throat may also become red and swollen after crying or talking too much, but these causes of throat redness and swelling are not bacterial infections.
Therefore, don’t go into the misconception that once you say your throat is red, you have inflammation, and once you have inflammation, you have to use antibiotics.
5. The purpose of treatment is not to stop coughing, but to dissolve phlegm
The purpose of our cough treatment is not to stop the cough but to transform the phlegm, because the secretions are very sticky and have many protein components in them. If these secretions are not discharged in the respiratory tract, bacteria will attach to the phlegm after they get in, and then the phlegm becomes a good medium for bacteria to multiply rapidly, leading to secondary infection, so the main purpose of treatment is to transform the phlegm so that the secretions become Therefore, the main purpose of treatment is to make the sputum thinner so that the secretions can be discharged more easily and not give the bacteria a chance to multiply.
Every time the child coughs hard, it is also the process of stimulating the mucous membrane to produce new secretions. The more stimulation there is, the more secretions are produced, and the cough will never end. Some parents say that their child’s cough is not heavy, but they can’t stop coughing for weeks at a time because they don’t use medicine to help him get rid of the secretions as soon as possible, so that the child coughs and excretes phlegm every time, and the cough stimulates the mucous membrane again and produces new secretions, and with the secretions, the child has to cough again, and so on, and the cough lasts longer.
Because the secretion is not a fixed amount, it is gone after coughing. With medicine, there is less secretion, the child coughs less, the mucous membrane is less stimulated, and the secretion becomes less and less. Therefore, coughing is something that gets better quickly with medicine and slower without it.
6. Treatment of cough: local medication is the most effective and has the least side effects
So, how do you give your child medicine and what medicine works well? Cough is a local disease. If you give your child internal medication, think about how much of the medicine can work locally? How long does it take to reach this area? Topical medications not only reach the affected area, but they also work quickly and do not harm other parts of the body, with minimal side effects.
Topical treatment of the respiratory tract is called nebulized inhalation. Nebulized inhalation requires a special apparatus to put the drug in the machine, and the drug will be sprayed out from the machine in the form of aerosol. After inhaling these mists, the entire respiratory tract from the nose and mouth will be exposed to this drug, which is highly targeted.
Even though some medication is inhaled into the body, the amount inhaled is very small. Unlike taking medication, the medication will enter the bloodstream. So, in comparison, inhalation therapy is not only fast-acting, but also has few side effects. Nebulized inhalation can have a very good effect on phlegm.
The nebulized inhalation drug that is usually used now is called Ambroxol Hydrochloride (trade name Mucosolvan), which is an enzyme drug, and enzymes digest proteins, and it will digest the proteins in the phlegm, making the particularly sticky secretions thin, so that the phlegm can be easily discharged.
During the first 2 days of nebulized inhalation of Ambroxol hydrochloride, we will notice that the frequency of the child’s cough increases, but the depth of the cough decreases, the cough sounds less labored, and the secretions become significantly thinner. This will continue for about two days and then improve significantly, because the secretions are draining out more and the child’s cough will become lighter until it disappears.
Although nebulized inhalation is good, it requires the child’s cooperation to complete. Because nebulized inhalation requires a mask to be placed over the child’s mouth and nose, and then the child is allowed to inhale the mist that is sprayed out. Although this mist is colorless and odorless, it is just like the wind, there will be a feeling of mist rushing to the nose and mouth, and the child may feel uncomfortable and refuse to use it.
At this time the mask and the child’s mouth and nose to open some distance, do not have to buckle very tight, the child will feel more comfortable. After slowly getting used to it, the child will accept this treatment more easily than taking medicine.