Wet Cough: Causes and Effective Treatment Options
A cough is the body’s natural way of responding to irritation in your respiratory tract, causing muscles in the airways to contract and push out any irritant or infection in a burst of air. Your airways are covered in cells that produce mucus which aids in the removal of dust, bacteria, viruses and other debris.
When you get a chest infection, your body produces more mucus than normal as it tries to remove the virus or bacteria. The excess mucus, known as phlegm or sputum, causes you to cough more frequently and forcefully – phlegm is then brought up and spat out or swallowed, destroying the pathogen and helping you recover. We call this a productive cough.
Most chest infections and productive coughs are caused by viruses rather than bacteria. As antibiotics only work on bacterial infections, this means that they won’t have any effect on most chest infections.
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Next steps
Starting small by taking it easy, getting good amounts of sleep, and ensuring that you are eating and drinking well – this will all help. Because mucus is mostly made from water, it can be easy to become dehydrated while you are experiencing a productive cough, especially if you have a fever, too. Hence it is important to take extra steps to ensure you are adequately hydrated throughout the day.
You can try some simple over-the-counter treatments to help with your symptoms. Healthwords pharmacists have put together some of our favourite medications that can be purchased to help with a productive cough.
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These treatments will not stop your cough but may help to relieve your symptoms. Paracetamol or ibuprofen can be used to relieve pain in your throat or respiratory muscles from coughing. Simple Linctus or a hot honey and lemon drink can soothe your throat, and cough sweets or lozenges work in the same way, if you're out and about.
Guafenacin cough syrup may help shift some of your phlegm.
Pharmacy Treatments
How can I stop my cough interrupting sleep?
It is relatively common to find that your productive cough is worse at night and is affecting your sleep. This is likely due to the fact mucus pools at the back of the lungs due to gravity when you're lying down, and this irritates the lung lining, causing a cough reflex.
If this is the case, you can try the previous simple remedies, and add a sleep aid such as the antihistamine diphenhydramine. The cough suppressant dextromethorphan can often be found in combination with diphenhydramine to aid with relieving nighttime coughing.
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