As you might have guessed I have a cold (or Flu, depending on whether this level of discomfort is enough to tip the definition over into ‘Flu’)
I’m taking paracetamol based tablets. Two every four hours. I feel like, at best, there is a mild placebo effect. And it seems to make me slightly more comfortable for a bit… a ‘bit’ that falls WAY short of the four hour span of time before I can take another dose.
Unless it’s just me: Why so ineffective? This is 2010.
OTC meds tend to be low strength(with some exceptions) to avoid consumers poisoning themselves.
I find paracetamol in general to be little better than a placebo. If you want fever/pain relief, look for something with ibuprofen.
Aside from that, the only truly effective cold medication I know of is sudafed. Dunno how the UK regulates it, but in the US you have to go to the pharmacy counter, ask for it specifically, and sign a register. They’ve replaced it with something completely useless in all the stuff that’s out on shelves.
Guaifenesin? Whatever.
Dextromethorphine? Whatever.
The effectiveness depends on what you’re looking at.
Do OTC cold and flu remedies shorten the duration of those viral illnesses? No. Hence, not effective.
On the other hand, paracetemol unquestionably will relieve minor aches and pains, including those generated by viral illnesses like colds. So for that they are, in fact, effective. Cough drops really can provide some relief for sore throats. Drinking hot liquids can help with congestion and extra fluids during any illness certainly won’t hurt.
For battling the virus itself - not effective.
For symptom relief there ARE effective remedies. They’re not magic, though, and some potions and pills sold really aren’t that good compared to others.
APAP is only effective for fever and pain, psuedoephedrine is only good for stuffy nose and sinus pressure, DM and guafinasin is good for cough. Diphenhydramine is good fora runny nose and sneezing.
Basically you need to take medication appropriate to your symptoms.
That’s supposed to thin mucus and make coughs more productive. If you don’t have thick mucus or a tight cough it won’t do much. Actually, even if you do, it won’t do a LOT, at best it will just take the edge off
Cough suppressant. Works better on some people than others. If that’s not good enough you need to go to a doctor and get some cough syrup with codeine - of course, codeine is a narcotic, it’s potentially addictive, and it has fun side effects like constipation even if you don’t get hooked on it.
Although there is a certain convenience to those all-in-one cold remedies I dislike them in part because they are collection of medications so unless you’re suffering a full complement of symptoms you wind up taking stuff you don’t really need along with what might work for you. So when I get one of those upper respiratory things going I try to figure out what symptoms I have and just medicate those, even if it means 2-4 pills at a time. That way, I also know what I’m taking and how much.
Though sometimes, if I’m feeling icky enough, there’s a lot to be said for just taking the lazy way out with a shot of Nyquil.
PSE was replaced with phenylephrine in OTC medications that don’t require an ID to purchase. The two medications you mentioned have nothing to do with what PSE treats, which is sinus congestion.
I’m in the early stages of what is shaping up to be a nasty cold. (Hoo-fucking-ray!) All I’ve been taking is ibuprofen supplemented with Hall’s honey lemon cough drops. I don’t have a stuffy nose (yet), and the only reason I’m coughing is because I’ve got a dry, scratchy throat. The ibuprofen is helping with the throat pain and the body aches, which are the biggest problems I’ve got. If I feel like I need it, I’ll get some Sudafed and/or cough syrup later.
I need a nap.
The only meds I’ve ever found even slightly effective for a stuffy head with a cold are nose sprays, the sorts you aren’t supposed to use for more than a few days… Sudafed? Ha! Therefore I only use them at night, so I can at least get a few hours of sleep.
Most OTC cold meds are useless in my experience, aside from the sprays and also ibuprofen or acetomenophen for generally feeling shitty. I don’t bother with anything else.
Well…think about other viral illnesses. How long does it take to cure, say, hepatitis? Or herpes or HIV? Longer than the week or two you have a cold, if ever.
Fact is, viral infections of all kinds are really hard to treat. Most of them we don’t have any effective drugs for, and you suffer through them until your body’s own immune systems makes enough antibodies to kill 'em. Colds and flus aren’t special hard to beat viruses, *all *viruses are hard to treat. Colds are simply the most common viral infections most people are likely to have.
Bacteria are comparatively easy to kill, because they’ve been waging chemical warfare against one another for millennia, and we’ve learned how to extract or synthesize their chemical weapons, call them antibiotics, and make medicines out of them. Viruses, on the other hand, have this weird hard shell, like to hide out inside our cells instead of in between them where our immune system or drugs can find them, and mutate faster than you’d believe possible. All those traits make them really hard to kill without killing the patient.
So we’re stuck with symptomatic treatments which, as you’ve found, are less than ideal. For that, frankly, you can blame the War on Drugs, at least here in the US. Every effective medication can be abused for recreational use or have adverse affects, and so has been yanked of the market or restricted somehow. So what we’re left with is stuff that you’re not likely to overdose on (except paracetamol/acetaminophen, but I give that one 10 years, tops, before it’s yanked) or get high with, but the lack of these dangerous or fun effects means that the therapeutic effects are limited, as well.
(Yes, I’m still bitter they took PPAaway.)
Is this a joke?
No, not really. It takes time, even with antiviral drugs, to get rid of any viral infection, and it takes longer than the time you have a cold - so much longer than many viral infections, like the ones I mentioned, are effectively incurable with current technology. They can be “managed” - the viral load in HIV can be reduced with drugs - but not truly cured.
It was awkwardly worded, but not a joke. Even if we were to give a patient with a cold an antiviral drug, it wouldn’t cure it any faster than his own body would, is what I was trying to get at.
Tangentially related, I’m suffering from what I believe to be exercise- and/or cold weather-induced vasomotor rhinitis. I keep getting annoyingly excessive sneezing bouts with a runny nose that puts Niagara Falls to shame after my long runs, including this past weekend’s half marathon. It’s had me in bed for a day and a half already and I have to go to work tomorrow, but going out in cold air or anything particularly odoriferous triggers a sneezing fit.
I have tried multiple doses of Sudafed (the real stuff), Zyrtec, and Nyquil and neti pot. Nothing has touched it. I would have called the doctor, but it’s Sunday and I didn’t feel this was urgent care worthy, although I am utterly miserable. I’m no better than I was yesterday at 11am when this all started. After 36 hours and 3-4 boxes of tissues, there’s hardly any skin left on my nostrils and I feel like I’d get more relief if I just start punching myself in the face repeatedly until I knock myself out cold.
I expected DOMS after the race, not this. Anyone with severe rhinitis have any success stories for me of meds that work? I was reading about Astelin and Atrovent here and they look like the best candidates for my symptoms.
Brown Eyed Girl, this is not medical advice, since I REALLY doubt I’m licensed in your state, but… if you were in Georgia and asked me, I would probably recommend Diphenhydramine (Benadryl) for you. Diphenhydramine is an antihistamine, and it should help dry you out, and stop the sneezing… However, it will make you very drowsy (it is actually the drug they put in all the PM pain meds in order to make you sleep).
Just got over a cold last week. I was determined not to allow it to end up in bronchitis as every cold I’ve had in the last five to seven years has done.
Every four hours except when sleeping -
Benadryl (diphenhydramine)
phenylephrine (the OTC Sudafed, not the good stuff)
guaifenesin - it won’t work well if you don’t drink at least 8oz of fluid with the dose, btw
Also taken religiously every four hours of the cold:
UMCKA Cold Care Original Drops - this is an extract of South African geranium, the only “herbal” or “alternative” thing I heartily endorse, with actual clinical research showing that it works.
I used a neti pot every morning and once in the afternoon on the two worst days of the cold. I also gargled with warm salt water as I felt it necessary.
The UMCKA and the nasal irrigation are the only two things I did differently with this cold… and it resolved in THREE DAYS. I don’t remember the last time I had a cold that resolved in three days. It usually drags on for five days, I feel better for about twelve hours, and then I start barking like a seal with bronchitis.
No help for you at this point, but one thing I have noticed over the years is how many people are really stupid when starting to come down with a cold or flu.
They wait until they are flat in bed before taking any remedy.
If you are starting to feel slightly ill, start drinking that orange juice, take an aspirin, and for ogsake, stay home! Rest. Eat chicken soup. Whatever. But stay home!
I have students who come to class carrying the plague, and as they exit the classroom, sneezing and coughing up phlegm, they say, “I stated feeling sick three days ago and I think I should go home and rest…”
Gee, ya think?!
Granted, there isn’t a lot you can do if you really catch that flu bug, or whatever other cooties are floating around - but you can at least detect some signs you might be coming down with something and do everyone else a favor and stay home, watch Oprah and don’t infect everybody else.
Didn’t we just have a thread on here where Qagdop mentioned that dextromethorphine is basically worthless with no studies to back up its supposed benefits?
Also, wasn’t PPA pulled from the market because it caused strokes? Not exactly something to lament.
No I understand the idea behind viral vs bacterial infections. Even back when H1N1 was a big deal, oseltamivir was the only medication that purported to do anything at all and even that just slowed the replication of the virus a tiny bit.
It just seemed like you were implying that herpes or HIV could be cured, they just took a long time.
Apparently there were a few strokes in young women. Which is terrible, I agree, but you know, acetaminophen overdoses kill via liver failure, yet that one is still on the market. Asprin causes blood clotting and bleeding problems. Too much pseudoephedrine can be associated with strokes. Even OTC stuff can hurt you if you misuse it or have an underlying medical condition.
I don’t know enough about the PPA thing to have an opinion on whether pulling it was justified (I understand it’s still on the market in Europe, though).
Yes, although most of them were taking it as an appetite suppressant, not a cold/cough remedy. It’s been a long time since I read the study that the FDA voluntary reformulation was based on, but I remember being a bit astonished that the FDA made the move based on a single study, when as other have already pointed out, there are other drugs with far more evidence of harm out there the FDA has ignored. Guess someone was just jumpy that day.
Snopes has a link to the study, if you feel like reading it. PPA Advisory Alert | Snopes.com
Yeah, you’re right. Sloppy writing there, I’m sorry. You ever do that thing where you sit there tweaking a sentence over and over when you really should just delete it and start over, and it ends up a worse mess than when you started? That’s what happened there.