“Health is not valued until sickness comes”
This is a fast-paced world we now live in. Everything’s urgent. Whenever we see some extra time, we stuff more tasks to do in it. No wonder why our health’s really suffering. We work ourselves like a locomotive until we get sick. It’s only when we are sick that we finally get the message our body is trying to tell us: STOP! By then you’d have to be gobbling up lots of medicine for cough and cold just to bounce back into shape fast so you can work again – and this time, work’s piled up on you. People who are prone to this kind of lifestyle are susceptible to various sickness because they stress too much, and today we’ll tackle chronic cough.
What is chronic cough?
What are the warning signs that you’re working yourself towards another episode of chronic coughing? We’ll take a look at 4 of them.
1. For adults, you’ve had the cough for 8 weeks. For kids, 4 weeks.
2. You have a stuffy nose
3. You regularly have to clear your throat
4. Hoarse coughing
Seems like the same symptoms for any kind of coughing, what do I really need to take note of? Good question. What really determines whether or not it’s a chronic cough is if you’ve had the cough for 8 weeks now because that’s too long for just a common cough.
What are the causes?
1. Smoking
How many times do we have to say it before you finally listen? Smoking isn’t good for you. If you’ve been suffering from chronic cough, you’ve got your smoking habit to blame. FYI, smoking is the most common cause of chronic cough.
2. Stress
If you’re going to work yourself up until 4am in the morning, only to wake up at 7 then you’re not getting enough sleep. If you don’t get enough sleep, your body will start to feel tired consequently lowering your immune system’s guard. This makes you prone to a lot of diseases, some leading to chronic cough.
3. Postnasal drip
When we have excess mucus from our sinus, it drips down to the back of the throat and triggers our cough reflex. This is also one of the explanations why you feel like you have to constantly clear your throat.
4. Infections
Suffering from an infection such as pneumonia or bronchitis can also be one of the reasons for your chronic cough. The inflammation of your major airways become congested with mucus, and your body doesn’t want this mucus to stay there, hence, it triggers the cough reflex to get rid of it.
5. Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)
GERD happens when our stomach acid back up into the tube that connects the stomach and the throat, which is our esophagus. The constant rising of the acid can trigger chronic coughing as it irritates our airways.
There could be other reasons why your cough is taking longer than expected. For instance, you may not be taking enough fluids. And everybody knows how important fluids are this ridiculously hot summer. Whatever reason it may be, just try harder in keeping yourself healthy. Develop good habits – exercise and eat good food. If you're prone to the causes mentioned above, make sure to consult with your doctor on how to avoid them.