A cough is a natural response that guards your lungs. Coughing is helpful in cleaning of our airways of lung from irritants, like smoke and mucus (a greasy substance). This cleaning prevents infection. Also cough can be an indication of a medical problem. Long-standing coughing can also cause unpleasant side effects, including exhaustion, chest pain, loss of bladder control and light-headedness. Coughing can also obstruct sleep, hang out, and work.
Coughing occurs when our airways become irritated. The airways are tubes that bring air in and out in our lungs. Some materials (like smoke and pollen), medical circumstances, and medicines can irritate these airways.
Cough can be divided into three stages depending on how long it lasts. These stages are Acute, sub acute, or chronic.
An acute cough lasts in between 3 weeks. Upper respiratory infection and common cold mainly causes an acute cough. Examples of Upper respiratory infections include the pneumonia, flu, and whooping cough.
A subacute cough lasts in 4 to 8 weeks. This kind of cough remains there, after a cold or other upper respiratory infections gets over.
A chronic cough lasts more than 8 weeks. Gastroesophageal reflux disease, Asthma, Postnasal drip, are main causes chronic cough.
The easiest and effective method to treat cough is to treat its basic cause. Like, for asthma treatment medicines are best option, because they open the airways.
In many cases doctor also recommend some cough medicine if the cause of cough is unidentified and the cough causes lot of uneasiness. Cough medicines are not good for kids they may harm them.
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