Posted by Dr Joe on September 23, 2024 · Leave a Comment
Last updated on October 23rd, 2024 at 05:50 pm
Just when you and your children have made it through the summer with all the allergic sneezing and coughing seen mostly at the beginning of the summer, Fall arrives and is ushered in by ragweed season. Here we go again: watery itchy eyes, sneezing, runny itchy nose, etc. Now throw in the contact between children of like ages occurring in school rooms across the country and what is a parent to think? Is this allergy, or might it be a cold? Good question, but in fact it makes very little difference if your child is otherwise healthy and feeling well.
While it is true you will begin to see infectious agents causing this situation, this is a child who need not be kept out of school and who need not necessarily be given any medicine to “cure the cold” (there are no existing medicines to cure a cold). There is a certain period of being contagious regardless of the effects of medicines on the symptoms for every infectious disease. In school aged children most of these illnesses are viral in nature and are very similar in their symptoms to allergic issues.
The contagious period often begins before the symptoms begin and are unaffected by the use of medications!
Regardless what many parents believe, I truly believe that “treatment” is only needed if the symptoms appear to be greatly influencing the life of the child; that is, interfering with appetite, sleeping, playing or school work. Unless that occurs, one is treating insignificant symptoms, such as cough, or fever and more to the advantage of the parents than the child. All medications have side effects and the over-the-counter cold preparations usually contain several medications of differing pharmaceutical classes; each designed to relieve a certain symptom, e.g. cough, runny nose, fever, etc. Most of the time your child does not need all features of these medications (but that’s the only way it comes) and side effects can occur.
Add to that the fact that even using the exactly correct medicine for the symptom, the over-the-counter medication is not liable to achieve the desired result. Also a good proportion of symptoms at this time of year may be allergy related and will respond even poorer to the over the counter cold medicines.
Other posts will deal with such issues as fever and use of antibiotics, but for now, you should be equally concerned about what goes into your child’s body whether that is foods or relatively useless medicines. Remember, as a parent, whether you sleep well at night or not is not as important as whether your child is perfectly comfortable even though there may be an annoying cough that you are listening to very intently all night.
You’re tired and yes you’re annoyed (it’s OK to be annoyed) but when you tentatively venture into your child’s room, most likely you’ll find he/she is sleeping, well, like a baby.
