Coughing all the Way!

It is not a pleasant experience to have cough, be it wet or dry. Having dry cough is worse, because it pains not only the throat, but also the chest! After experiencing the nagging cough the past 10 days, about 5 days with wet cough, followed by a good share of dry cough! I had followed literally and seriously all the suggestions I received from my family people and friends, to ward off the cough, and finished off one full bottle of cough syrup, but nothing seems to be improving! But then I know there should be a way out!

I waded through the internet, seeking some more simple home remedies to get out of the cough, and just a click of a button at the Google was all that required for me to get half a dozen ways to fight dry cough off. Let me acknowledge that this is not my creation, but ways of traditionally handling cough! The ideas are presented here with the hope it might benefit someone who is in need.

First of all, what is a cough and why do we cough? Coughing is the natural reflex of a body to feeling of irritation in the throat. There are basically two types of cough - Wet and Dry. The wet cough is often accompanied by mucus or phlegm while dry cough is one where there is no mucus and the throat hurts a lot due to dryness. Dry cough can arise due to plenty of factors like smoking, excessive exposure to pollution, dust or any other allergy, etc.

The most effective treatment for dry cough is by natural and home remedies. These remedies have been proven useful much before medicines came into existence and became popular. Check out some popular natural and home remedies for treating dry cough.

• Extract the juice of ginger and mix it with honey. Take this 3-4 times a day for quick relief from coughing.
• Gargles are always effective for treating dry cough. Take some lukewarm water with a bit of salt and gargle. Alternatively, you can prepare a decoction of henna leaves for treating dry cough.
• Take a small and fresh piece of ginger and peel off the skin. Sprinkle a pinch of salt on it and chew it, taking the juice inside. It is very effective in treating dry cough.
• Take 3-4 balls of black pepper and with of caraway seeds with a hint of common salt. Suck on it for some time and you will notice instant relief.
• Take one gram of turmeric powder and mix it with a teaspoon of honey. Take this 3 times a day and dry cough will vanish away quickly.
• Prepare ginger tea by adding ginger when the water begins to boil and before you add tea leaves. Put in a pinch of pepper powder and 3-4 basil leaves. Drink hot and feel your throat soothing down.
• Before going to bed, drink hot milk with some honey. This will provide instant relief from dry cough and also make sure that you have a sound sleep.

Home Remedies

We live in a world, where there is no place for simplicity. Anything simple and easy is considered unscientific and naivette, and relegated to wastepaper bins. We love to have sophisticated solutions to simple problems, and do believe that simple solutions cannot tackle simple problems. Even a common cold and cough can find the physicians cracking their minds to provide the best medicine possible, but it generally takes us more time than we could think of to understand that there are certain solutions which are far too simple and can do the miracle than the highly complicated solutions which technology has provided us with. Home remedies is surely a fast-disappearing art, and if we want to regain health and fair amount of healthy living, we need to return to our grandmothers, with a scrap notebook in hand.

I am not fortunate enought to run to my grand mother, for both my paternal and material grand mothers are no more; nor did I really have a very close relationship with them to milk the juice out of their knowledge base, their rustic wisdom. Luckily I have my mother, who retains not only the rustic look, but also character and quality in her knowledge of simple home remedies which had been practised for centuries, but being buried under the weight of modern technology. When I am in need of a simple solution to a simple problem, my mother often would have one, and it would often come unasked for. The beauty here is no consultation fees required, and it comes with an extra dose of love and care.

After being stuck down by common influenza, with resultant cough, cold, fever, body ache, I got a call from my sister; after recommending a home remedy, she passed the phone on to my mother, who verbatim repeated what my sister had briefed me. And in the evening I was in the kitchen to prepare that odd-looking and tasting concoction - a glass of milk with quarter tea-spoon of turmeric powder and half spoon full of pepper powder, and sugar to taste. That is good for common cold, cough and sore throat. I had already begun this remedy for two days, when another friend of mine had an improved version of the same remedy.

She briefed me this remedy for cough, cold, sore throat: coffee mixed with beaten raw egg, turmeric and pepper powder, and a little bit of brandy. When I protested that if I were to take this concoction for five to seven times, then ultimately I might have been cured of common cold, but might have become an alcoholic! So, I begged to drop this remedy, when my friend added that I could drop brandy if I really don't want to take it. So that solved the problem, and here I am sipping the last bit of this new concoction. I know one thing for sure, these concoctions are not going to cause me any trouble.

But there were also simpler remedies from simpler souls, which I welcomed with open heart. Remember to gargle with salt in warm water, and that will kill the germs and you will be soon free from cough and cold! (The direction also included this innocuous caution : don't swallow the salt water, because that may be bad for the stomach!). If only we have more trust and belief in the wisdom of our foreparents, we would be saving so much of money, driving about half the physicians to unemployment. Every person on earth is in the know-how of some remedies or other, some simple and some complicated solutions to simple and complicated problems and issues. I am turning to take these home remedies a little seriously. How about you?