I don’t treat this age group anymore, but when I did (a whole 6 years ago), I recall getting looks of disbelief from parents when I tried to discourage them from using antihistamines and decongestants on their little ones.
Will you parents of youngsters go along with it?
Dang, I meant to put this into IMHO!
Could a kind person bring this to a mod’s attention so it might be moved?
It’s the brain fever that’s doing it to me…
Frankly, I probably won’t stay away from them (kids are 5.5 & almost 8). Relieving symptoms at night allows them to sleep, which really helps.
And they do work! Stuffy nose goes away, or cough is suppressed… it ain’t rocket science.
Good Doctor Qadgop,
I’m a bit confused in reading that link. Is it that the cold meds are not effective, or, are more harmful than good? Is it a matter of not aiding the immune response during duress from cold symptoms, or that it is detrimental in the course of illness?
I’m…torn.
My first line of treatment for colds is alternative medicine, especially for little ones. (I know, the FDA’s not crazy about that, either, I’m sure.) But a little lemon balm and catnip tea, a bit of eucalyptus and grapefruit essential oils in the humidifier, a little bit extra garlic, burdock and calendula in dinner, some rosemary oil rubbed on the little chest, and most of our sniffles go away pretty quickly on their own.
If sleep starts getting disrupted it’s a lot harder to avoid reaching for the purple box.
My daughter right now (micropreemie, history of lung issues) has pneumonia from a cold gone awry. I can’t help but wonder if I had given her an expectorant to help clear her chest two weeks ago if she wouldn’t be on Albuterol and Augmentin (sp?) now. And, in all honesty, I’m more likely to just give her the expectorant next time she gets a cold, to try to prevent this.
I am, however, perflummoxed as to how these OTC drugs are able to make health claims and still be legally sold without, seemingly, proof of effectiveness, while I can’t actually tell people that Saint John’s Wort treats mild to moderate depression - I have to couch it in b.s. about “supporting emotional health” or get slapped with a fine that would shut me down.
I have in the past for my son (his doctor prescribed it when he was younger than one); however, I don’t think I’d do it again if given the chance. I used the medication correctly, but didn’t notice any change (though I think I was more cautious with it than his pediatrician was expecting), so I haven’t bothered since, even though my son’s pediatrician has offered it as a suggestion more than once since. For what it’s worth, I feel very fortunate that, though my son’s pediatrician and I occasionally have differences of opinion, she doesn’t make me feel like a bad parent if I choose not to try one of her recommendations if it goes against my grain or hasn’t worked in the past. But that’s beside the point.
Anyway, I’m more comfortable letting a cold run its course. If he has to sleep on top of me for a couple of nights, that’s no big deal. He’s never been a stellar sleeper to begin with, so my husband and I already have a system in place to make sure that we each have a chance to get a good night’s sleep at least every other night. And my son rarely acts sick while he has a cold - it’s the nights that are the problem.
My dad’s a pediatrician so I’ve heard this for years. no young ones here, but if I had one, the cold meds would be out. Motrin and tylenol for pain, plus plenty of fluids.
-Lil
My kids are outside this age now but yes, I would use the products again, especially cough suppressants. IME, they do work.
What’s really going on here? I keep reading these claims that the medicines don’t work. But they do. Anyone with kids knows they do.
The link in the OP didn’t have specific numbers, but one report I saw this week claimed 130 deaths from these medicines in the past 35 years. That seems pretty damn low, given the billions of doses administered in that timeframe.
How these medicines got on the market without testing is worth investigating, but at this point these medicines seem to have been pretty thoroughly validated by real world use.
I’m not a parent, but I will say that I went over 25 years without taking an antibiotic. I stopped taking most medicines when I was old enough to dump itdown the sink without my mother noticing. And many years down the road when I was part of a NIH AIDS vaccine study run here by Vanderbilt University, of all the people throughout the country, I had the strongest immune response to the vaccine. I think our immune systems have to be tested, be strengthened by fighting off bugs. oes that mean no meds ever? Of course not. But it does mean letting your kid feel sick and letting her body heal itself when it can.
StG
Congratulations on your prizewinning immune system. I’m pretty sure OTC cold medicines are intended only to lessen symptoms, though, and don’t contain any antibiotics.
Were I a parent, I would therefore want some other explanation why I shouldn’t administer these drugs to my kids, since it shouldn’t affect the immune response and because “suffering builds character” doesn’t particularly wash.
I never said suffering builds character. I feel the immune system is like a muscle - it has to be used. Of course, I could be wrong.
StG
My kids are grown now, but when they were small I always preferred to let a cold run its course. I sometimes dosed them up with Vicks on their chests (they liked it, like I always did when I was a kid, so it was more for comfort than medicine) and would run a humidifier in their rooms at night when they had a cold. For us, I just didn’t find that the dopiness and grogginess the cold meds caused were worth the minor reduction in symptoms.
I rarely take cold meds myself, either.
I’ve never used cold/cough medicines for my kids and only rarely used them for myself. I was always under the impression that they were something for adults and that it was better to just let everything run its course, anyway. That’s what our doctors have always told us. We use Tylenol & Motrin for pain or uncomfortable fever, steam for congestion, and tea with honey to soothe. My littlest one has a history of bronchiolitis, so we use his bronchiodilators if he starts wheezing (puffer with a spacer). We’re just finishing up a round of croup for both kids and we had steroid shots administered at the pediatrician’s office to open up their airways when it got really scary.
I never used cold medicine with Kid Kalhoun. But he did have chronic ear infections and I think the stuff the doctor prescribed for that is a lot like cold medicine. However, I only did prescription stuff; never OTC.
When he was way small, I used the infamous booger-sucker. Grossening but effective.
I like to think of myself as a reasonably intelligent person. I am quite confused by these reports. They are saying that these cold medications just don’t work? That an anti-histamine has no effect on a child and that it is age dependent? So at some magical age it begins to interact in our bodies in a way that is effective? That makes no sense.
It was far too many years before I learned that Poison Ivy was a histamine reaction and that taking anti-histamines would help lesson the effects. Considering I spent the vast majority of my time as a child slathered in pink stuff, I wish I knew it sooner.
I can not wrap my head around them saying they just “don’t work.” I can wrap my head around the fact that it is easier to overdose a small child, or that the side effects can be more problematic for a child, but just not working?
If anyone can help me understand this, I would deeply appreciate it. I have a 2 year old and I have treated her with anti-histamines before and like others have said, when you have a kid with a snot faucet, give them some and the snot faucet dries up, what isn’t working?
(BTW, I can grok that we probably do over-medicate ourselves and that a healthy immune system is a working immune system and that there is no cure for a cold, just an easing of symptoms until they run their course.)
I wouldn’t
I did use cold medicines on my kids when they were babies and I still would if I had younger children but only at doctor recommended dose and at night for help sleeping. From my observations they do work.
I’ve never noticed most OTC cold medicines doing anything for me at all, as a kid or as an adult. All I take for a cold is tylenol or ibuprofen, plus for a couple of nights some Afrin so I can at least get a little bit of sleep.
If I had kids I probably wouldn’t bother with the medicine for them, anyway, because of my experience.
I don’t have kids, but I think I would avoid giving the decongestants, expectorants and cough suppressors, unless a doctor said it was necessary. If I had a kid, presumably it would have my genes, and I tend to get the unpleasant, jittery side effects from these.
Antihistamines are sort of a different story, IMHO. They really aren’t that relevant to a cold. But when I have a cold, it is important to “nuke my allergies from orbit” or I will be truly miserable. In other words, if a cold strikes during allergy season, I need to take more antihistamines to treat my allergies or I suffer a lot.
So one question I have about this is whether the antihistamines would still be marketed to kids for the treatment of allergies.
It does make sense. Children are not just tiny adults. They have different hormones, different things happening in their bodies - the level of cell division and growth is very different than in an adult. There’s no logical reason to think that they would react in the same way to anything at all, frankly. Their biochemistry is very different from an adult’s.
I’m not saying they’re RIGHT, mind you. I do value the reports “from the field” - actual parents who have found them effective for their particular children. It doesn’t mean I won’t use what works for my kid. Statistics might tell me it doesn’t work for 90% of children (number made up), but if my kid happens to be in the 10% it does work for, then I’ll use it. The possible harm seems very small; like **initech *says, the number of deaths associated with child cold medicine use is so absurdly small it might well be just a statistical blip or a misdiagnosis or wrong determination of death. But I do think there should be separate trials and FDA approval based on the actual target audience. Just as we now know that men and women respond to some drugs differently, it’s very logical to think that children and adults respond to some drugs differently.
And it’s no different in the herbal world, BTW. Most herbalists would cringe at the idea of giving a small child peppermint essential oil, even topically. It’s just too “stimulating”; it’s on every basic “do not use with children” herbal first aid list. What does that mean in real terms? It means a sick kid given peppermint oil is likely to get wired - lots of disruptive activity and agitation, not purposeful and useful feeling-better energy.
*I just think that things should be available whether or not they have FDA approval - I’d rather see a medical model of FDA approval being extra assurance that something has been clinically proven effective so people would know that, but we should have the right to consume anything we like.
I can’t help but wonder if some of these overdoses are due to parents giving the medicine to children solely to quiet them down/make them sleep. I know that lots of people do it prior to a flight or if they just have a cranky kid who doesn’t go to sleep easily.