How to Stop a Consistent Cough

Periods of coughing can be triggered by bouts of asthma, allergies, cold or flu viruses or even as a side effect from some drugs--most notably from ACE inhibitors, which are betablockers. While these temporary coughs are annoying to you and those around you, they are a mild inconvenience. Consistent coughs, however, can become a debilitating problem. The Asthma Center website explains how sufferers can end up with fractured ribs, muscle pain, sickness, stress incontinence and lack of sleep. The exhaustion from the sleeplessness leads to problems at work. Their whole life is impacted upon negatively by the coughing. Causes of persistent coughs commonly include smoking, asthma, acid reflux and sinus infections.

Instructions

• 1

  Find out the cause of the persistent cough. Without doing this you will just be treating the symptoms, which should be a last resort, not the first. Ask your doctor to do a chest scan if you and he have ruled out all the obvious possibilities.

• 2

  Treat your symptoms with over the counter medicines while you work with your doctor to solve the underlying problem. As an alternative treatment for the symptoms, chop some onions very finely and put them in a jar with layers of brown sugar in between them. Leave the mixture until you have a syrup-like solution. Take a desert spoonful every hour and add some chopped up thyme to the solution if your cough is tickley.

• 3

  Treat your persistent cough according to the cause behind it. If the cause is smoking, or allergies, for example, give up smoking or eliminate the irritants from your environment. Any lung diseases detected by your doctor will be treated with medication or you may need to be hospitalized for more intensive therapies. If one of your current prescription medicines is causing the cough you will need to swap to another one. Medication and dietary changes will be used if your consistent cough is caused by an acid reflux problem.

  All of these treatments will take a while to work so, in the meantime, continue treating the symptoms. Ask your doctor for help if you have trouble sleeping during this time.