What to do if a child keeps coughing after catching a cold

Some children have poor immunity, so they are easily infected by bacteria and viruses and catch a cold. Children usually develop coughing symptoms after catching a cold. Many babies continue to cough for a long time after they have recovered from a cold. This may be caused by the trachea being infected by bacteria during the cold. Let’s take a look at what to do if your child keeps having a cold and cough?

What should I do if my baby keeps having a dry cough after catching a cold?

1. Pay attention to adjusting the indoor temperature and humidity

Appropriate temperature and humidity can keep the baby's respiratory tract clean. When the indoor temperature is too high and the humidity is too low, the cilia movement function of the baby's respiratory tract will be greatly reduced, and the ability to resist germs will be reduced, resulting in the little one's coughing for a long time. Experiments show that when the ambient humidity is lower than 35%, the influenza virus can survive for more than 24 hours, but if the ambient humidity is higher than 50%, the influenza bacteria will not survive for more than 10 hours. It can be seen that if the mother pays attention to increasing the environmental humidity and controls the environmental humidity above 50%, it can effectively inhibit the survival of influenza virus and prevent the virus from invading the baby.

2. Ensure your baby gets enough sleep

For babies with a long-term cough, ensuring that the little one gets enough sleep and water intake can speed up the baby's recovery process. Lack of sleep not only affects the baby's growth and development, but also reduces the baby's resistance. Babies with low resistance will catch colds repeatedly, which is also one of the main reasons for babies' coughs.

3. Give your baby more water

Dry throat can also easily cause the baby to have a long-term cough. When the baby coughs, the mother should make sure the baby drinks more water. This can replenish the body's water, and it can also relieve sore throat and discomfort, which is beneficial to cough recovery.

The harm of itchy throat and cough in children

1. Affecting normal diet: For example, dry throat caused by dry or atrophic pharyngitis makes it difficult to speak and swallow saliva, and you need to drink water frequently to moisten the saliva, and even use soup to help swallow food when eating.

2. Affecting normal rest: Throat itching causes bouts of irritating coughing, or due to the thickening of the pharyngeal mucosa, it affects the smoothness of breathing and often causes snoring during sleep, resulting in a decrease in sleep quality.

3. Psychological impact: Some people feel like there is something wrong with their throat, so they often make “grunting” and swallowing movements in the hope of removing the foreign body. However, these ineffective throat-clearing movements can only aggravate the existing discomfort, so they suspect that they have a tumor in their throat or esophagus, which causes a heavy mental burden and depression. Some people suffer from bad breath due to the retention of inflammatory secretions and bacteria, which affects others and causes distress to themselves.

4. Damage to the lungs. Long-term chronic coughing can increase the intrapulmonary pressure. In patients with lung diseases, such as chronic bronchitis and tuberculosis, severe coughing can weaken the elasticity of the alveolar wall, eventually leading to alveolar rupture and the formation of bullae, forming a vicious circle. Secondly, coughing itself can cause congestion in the throat, which is not conducive to the recovery of pharyngitis.