Your head is banging, your throat is scratchy, you cough all the time and you find it hard to breathe through a stuffy nose … Before your cold develops for good, you leave the pharmacy with a drug bag to give the disease a shock dose. Mistake - it's easy to overdose, because the same substances are contained in different tablets and syrups. How to deal with colds and avoid mistakes? Our list of the most commonly used cold and flu medications will help you do that.

Treatment of coldsshould be done wisely. Do not take all possible medications at the same time, but carefully check their composition so as not to duplicate the same substances contained in them. However, this is not the only mistake made by patients. During a cold, when a runny nose is extremely tiring, nasal drops come to the rescue, and for a sore throat - tablets. However, is this a good way to cure a cold? Find out how to treat colds and what mistakes to avoid!

Treating colds - don't make these mistakes:

Do not duplicate cold medications

Preparations for colds usually contain the same healing substances:

  • paracetamol,
  • acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin),
  • ibuprofen,
  • pseudoephedrine.

These substances may appear under different trade names. Therefore, if you do not read the ingredients carefully, you can easily overdose them.

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We often reach for one drug that reduces fever, another for cough, and yet another one that generally affects various symptoms of colds, and each of them contains exactly the same active substance. The only advice - read the information on the drug packaging, because overdosing may have serious consequences.

A frequent mistake is also the use of preparations containing ingredients with the opposite effect, e.g. combining a combined drug that soothes, among others, dry cough with expectorant syrup.

In order to avoid such mistakes, it is worth consulting a pharmacist, describing the symptoms that bother us. This is especially true of combination drugs, which are becoming more and more on the market. The TABLE at the end of the article will also help you with this.

Do not abuse the drops intonose

Initially, they undoubtedly bring relief - the drops constrict the blood vessels in the nasal mucosa and facilitate the flow of air, so it is easier to breathe. However, after a few days the receptors that cause the capillaries to contract, begin to react less and less to the drug, and increasing its dose leads to changes in the nasal mucosa. As a result, there is a very difficult to master so-called drug runny nose - drops that were supposed to fight a runny nose become its cause.

That's why doctors advise you not to use the drops for more than 4-5 days. If the runny nose persists after this time, it is better to use tablets (e.g. Sudafed, Acatar - attention, they cannot be used by people with cardiological problems, hypertension, glaucoma), which also constricts the vessels in the mucosa, but does not have any effect. reflections, just like topical droplets.

The safest, however, is rinsing the nose with saline or an aerosol with sea water or inhaling with essential oils (eucalyptus oil, menthol) - they clean, moisturize and disinfect the mucosa.

For a sore throat - use rinses instead of tablets

Lozenges are the most popular remedy for a sore throat, but they contain substances that penetrate the throat mucosa only to a small extent, therefore they are of little therapeutic importance.

They increase salivation, improving the hydration of the mucosa and alleviating a sore throat, but their benefits end there. They quickly go to the stomach, and here they can even harm, instead of heal - most of these substances contain large amounts of sugar, they can also irritate the digestive tract and cause diarrhea.

Some throat medications make the tongue feel numb. Therefore, in case of a sore throat, it is worth supporting yourself with external natural remedies that moisturize the mucosa and have an antiseptic effect, without burdening the stomach - rinse the throat with warm water with s alt or chamomile infusion. After that, you should not eat or drink anything for at least half an hour.

Sage and thyme also have a disinfecting effect. You also need to keep the air in the house well moistened. It should also be remembered that a sore throat may be a symptom not only of a cold or flu - sucking tablets or using mouth rinses before a doctor's visit may then make it difficult to make a proper diagnosis.

Don't do that

If you are taking cold medications containing paracetamol, remember not to drink alcohol (e.g. in the form of mulled wine) - the combination of alcohol and paracetamol will damage the liver!

Antibiotic? Not for a cold!

Cold - runny nose, sore throat, slightly elevatedtemperature, cough, malaise - this is an infection caused by viruses, and antibiotics are not able to threaten them in any way. That is why treating a raised temperature or a stuffy nose with an antibiotic (usually one that remained in our medicine cabinet after fighting some bacterial infection) is one of the most common mistakes.

As a result of such treatment, the antibiotic not only will not help, but then it may turn out to be completely ineffective in the case of other, much more serious infections, e.g. bacterial angina.

Match the syrup to the type of cough

It doesn't matter which syrup is used, for how long and at what time. For dry cough it should be a syrup that suppresses the cough reflex. It should be taken primarily at night, an hour before going to bed, to allow for a good night's sleep. During the day, use only when the cough is very troublesome. But after 2-3 days, such a syrup has to be set aside.

Then a dry cough usually turns into a wet cough, and then an expectorant syrup will come to the rescue, thinning secretions and facilitating bronchial cleansing. It should be used during the day after a meal, the last time in the late afternoon, so that the cough does not make it difficult to fall asleep.

Remember also that many cold remedies also contain an antitussive ingredient - usually dry cough suppressant dextromethorphan (see table below). So they can be used in the initial stage of the disease (provided that we really have a cough, and not "just in case") and should not be combined with an expectorant syrup.

TABLE: composition of popular cold and flu medications

paracetamolibuprofenpseudoephedrinephenylephrinedextromethorphanpheniraminewit. Cacetyl acid.caffeineguaifenesin
Fervexxxx
ColdrexMaxgripxxx
Choligripxxx
CholigripMaxxxx
CholigripEffectxx
Febrisanxxx
Gripexxx x
Gripex Controlxx
Gripex Maxxx x
GripexHotactivexxx
GripexNocxxxx
Grypostopxxx
GrypostopMixxxxx
Grypolekxxxx
GripblockerExpressxxx
Nurofen Gulfxx
IbumGripxx
Antygrypinxxx
TherafluExtraGripxxx
TherafluZatokixx
Tabcin Trendxxx

What are the ingredients of cold and flu medications?

  • paracetamol- has an analgesic and antipyretic effect;
  • ibuprofen- has anti-inflammatory, analgesic and antipyretic properties;
  • pseudoephedrine- constricts blood vessels, reduces nasal congestion, opens the nose and sinuses, making breathing easier;
  • phenylephrine- has an effect similar to pseudoephedrine;
  • dextromethorphan -inhibits the cough reflex, it is used for exhausting dry cough;
  • pheniramine -has antihistamine and antiallergic properties, but also soothes a runny nose accompanying a cold; may cause drowsiness, therefore drugs with pheniramine are better taken in the evening and care should be taken when using other antiallergic drugs;
  • vitamin C -until recently it was thought to support the body's immunity, but the latest research on vitamin C does not confirm these properties;
  • acetylsalicylic acid -has anti-inflammatory, analgesic and antipyretic properties. It should not be used in children and adolescents (risk of Rey's syndrome)
  • caffeine- has a stimulating effect;
  • guaifenesin -has an expectorant effect (it is also an ingredient of the popular Guajazyl cough syrup); among the combined drugs used in the treatment of colds, guaifenesin contains only one - Grypolek. Interestingly, this preparation also contains dextromethorphan and is advertised as a medicine for both dry and wet cough. The problem is that you can't treat both types of cough at the same time.

As you can see from our list, choosing the right drug is often made difficult by the producers themselves. It happens that the names of preparations with the same composition suggest a different application - for example Nurofen Zatoki and Ibum Grip.

Manufacturers also introduce series of preparations that differ greatly in composition, or on the contrary - they are the samevery similar, eg Gripex Control is practically only a painkiller (paracetamol + caffeine), while "regular" Gripex contains, in addition to paracetamol, an ingredient soothing a runny nose, the anti-cough dextromethorphan, Gripex Noc also includes an antihistamine.

In turn, Gripex Max has the same composition as Gripex, there is only more paracetamol in it (similar to Choligrip and Choligrip Max). Therefore, before you rush to the pharmacy, read the drug description (leaflets with a detailed description of the action and a list of contraindications are available at online pharmacies and on manufacturers' websites) or consult a pharmacist.

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