What to do if your baby's cough won't go away

The baby's cough cannot be cured because many parents have misjudged whether the child has a cold cough or a hot cough. If the judgment is wrong at this step, there will be problems in the treatment. The first thing to do when your baby coughs is to determine the cause, which can be determined through various manifestations, such as tongue coating, urine color, stool status, etc.

There are many medicines for children's cough in clinical practice, but how to distinguish the child's cough and treat it dialectically, and choose cough suppressants for children's respiratory diseases is the key to children's medication. According to clinical statistics, 70% of colds in children ≤3 years old are caused by internal heat and external cold. Because children of this age have not yet developed a sound digestive function, eating a few more bites or eating something that is difficult to digest will easily cause stagnation. If the stagnation is not digested, it will turn into heat in the body after a period of time, which will manifest as thick tongue coating, bad breath, red lips, yellow urine, dry stools, and usually well-behaved children will become irritable and noisy. Once children with food accumulation and internal heat catch a cold, they will develop internal heat and external cold, creating "internal fire" and external symptoms such as fever, cough, and sneezing.

According to traditional Chinese medicine theory, lung heat and phlegm are the root causes of children's cough. Children have a pure Yang constitution and an active metabolism, which easily generates heat in the body. The heat cannot be dissipated and accumulates in the lungs, causing lung heat. The lungs control the skin and fur. The heat evil in the lungs could have been dissipated through the pores with sweat. Once affected by the wind and cold evil, the pores are blocked by the cold evil, and the heat evil in the lungs cannot be dissipated, so it accumulates more and more, thus forming the most common cold external heat internal symptom of the common cold. In the entire process of a cold, "getting angry" (lung heat) is the root cause and plays a decisive role. Lung heat "bakes" the normal thin sputum produced in the child's lungs into thick sputum that is not easy to cough out, and coughing occurs. Therefore, to prevent children from catching colds and coughs, we must start by clearing away lung heat.

Kind tips

Cough is the most common symptom of pediatric lung diseases in clinical practice. Cough can occur in any season of the year, especially in winter and spring. The changes in the temperature of the external climate can directly affect the lung qi and cause cough. Children's internal organs are delicate, and their defenses are not strong, so they are more susceptible to this disease. If the exogenous cough recurs, it often turns into a chronic internal injury cough, which is stubborn and difficult to treat and takes a long time to heal.

Therefore, parents should pay attention to their children's bowel movements, changes in tongue texture and tongue coating, changes in lip color and breath, etc. in daily life, so as to promptly discover whether their children are getting angry (formation of internal heat) and understand what to do if their children's cough does not go away. Taking timely countermeasures to eliminate the evil fire in the body can effectively prevent children from catching a cold.