What to Use for a Cough Besides Cough Medicine

Coughing is an attempt to clear the lungs of fluid, mucus or other material preventing the free passage of air or causing irritation. Persistent coughing can become an irritation in itself. Being caught in a loop of irritation, cough, further irritation and continued coughing can become exhausting. Lack of sleep lowers resistance to disease, which can further increase the irritants causing the cough. Suppressing a cough with medicine does nothing to reduce or eliminate the reason it occurs.

Cough Suppressants

Terpin hydrate with codeine, a licorice and orange peel-flavored elixir, was withdrawn in the late 1980s as an over-the-counter cough remedy. Terpin hydrate was proven by the Food and Drug Administration to be of little to no value in loosening lung secretions vs. treatment with guaifenesin or nothing at all. Codeine's proven cough suppressant ability is outweighed by the danger of addiction from continuous use.

Dextromethorphan, an ingredient of Robitussin (R), and diphenhydramine, found in Benadryl (R), were shown to be no more effective than no treatment at all in a double-blind study published in 2004, performed at Penn State University. A later study performed in 2006 revealed that honey did provide significant relief.

Historical Remedies

Sassafras, catnip, onions, ginger, oregano oil, horehound, eucalyptus and pennyroyal have all been used to treat coughs for centuries. Recipes from the late 1800s recommend horehound candy as an effective remedy. Both horehound and eucalyptus cough drops are available at your local drugstore. Sugar and honey were added to sassafras roots that had been rinsed and boiled to make tea. Inhaling the steam while drinking the tea increased its ability to loosen chest congestion. Pennyroyal, horehound and catnip were also used in teas.

Poultices

Onions were made into soup or applied to the chest as poultices. Mustard plasters were also believed to be effective at breaking mucus secretions. The heat of the poultice provided comfort, but there is little evidence to prove that it actually reduced the causes or duration of the cough.

Cough Candies

Cough candy recipes from the 1800s included slippery elm bark, Irish moss, flaxseed, licorice, anise, brown sugar, lemon juice, vinegar, peppermint, wintergreen and horehound leaves. These ingredients were boiled to the hard crack candy stage, poured onto a marble counter to cool, broken into pieces, coated with powdered sugar and stored in tins. They were also rolled into candy sticks and distributed as cough drops.

Chocolate

Theobromine, an ingredient in tea and chocolate, is the most promising of the newest potential treatments for coughs. In a double-blind study performed in Great Britain, published in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Journal, the subjects who took theobromine " ... needed about one-third more capsaicin to produce coughing than those who took codeine." Codeine has long ago been proven effective at controlling the cough reflex, but its addictive power outweighs its benefit.