Does Cough Syrup Really Work?
What do you do when you have a really bad cough? If you reach for the cough medicine, you're not alone. Every year people spend billions of dollars on this stuff, but does any of it work? Coughing is a natural reflex that clears your airways of anything that's not supposed to be in there. When an irritant floats into your nose or mouth, receptors in the airway send signals to your brain sounding the alarm, then another message is sent back to your diaphragm, and you cough at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour. other mammals do this too. Ah, but what do you do when that cough becomes more than just annoying? If you were born in the 1800s, your old timey cough syrup might have consisted of morphine , alcohol, cannabis, chloroform, or even heroin. Fortunately, today's cough medicines contain a number of more reasonable active ingredients. Depending on what you just picked up from the drugstore. One or more of these ingredients are probably in your cough medicine. antitussive l