HACKER Q&A
📣 hnthrowaway0328

Why is it so hard to suppress coughing?


I get it. Coughing is a defense mechanism that spits out bacterias and such. But for God's sake it is so devastating! I can barely sleep. I don't know why the human gene "prefer" severely coughing as it completely destroys sleep (which delays healing) and attracts enemies miles away.

Anyway, is there anything that I can do to completely remove coughing (resulted from common cold or similar) from the list of symptoms? Is there a hack? I can take it even if it's slightly harmful.


  👤 brudgers Accepted Answer ✓
The hack that worked for my hacking wasn't a hack.

Turns out I have asthma and my bouts of chronic coughing like what you describe seem to have been a symptom of it.

Basically, one cough would trigger more coughs and more coughs would become a coughing fit.

Treating my asthma seems to be working.

Which is to say, treating my previously undiagnosed asthma seems to be working. And in my fifties, it was weird to have to learn how to recognize I was having an asthma attack and hard to develop the habit of hitting a rescue inhaler.

To be clear, I went to various doctors many times over the years to get symptomatic treatment without being diagnosed with asthma. Going all the way back to childhood.

So on the medical questionnaires I would always check asthma-no because I wasn't diagnosed. It's only because my insurance had teledoc and a random doctor said my description of my cough sounded like an asthma symptom that I got diagnosed and began treatment.

So basically my hack for chronic hacking is competent medical treatment. Which is easier said than done.

Good luck.


👤 eimrine
> Coughing is a defense mechanism that spits out bacterias and such.

Coughing is pushing air from lungs in such a way to create maximum acceleration of everything which is denser than air, typically water. You have a dry caugh but some parts of brain believe there is still some water inside. But if your body malfunctions, your behaviour counts as an UB, and you might experience anything, you can even forget your own name.


👤 Quinzel
TCI remifentanil takes away coughing - but I strongly don’t recommend doing this. (And you can’t really do this anyway) But technically - it does take away coughing.

Other things you can do: use a humidifier or something like a Vicks vapouriser. Vicks Vaporub may also help. Or Inhalers, like salbutamol or something… if it’s really that bad go to your doctor and get a once over and maybe you need steroids or something.


👤 kakaz
The answer is simple: you are definitely not a simulation written in angular. Your body is just a flesh and blood, and it is managed by biological device which control everything on the level of a frog. Upper level function are just kind of promotion, which does not control you, unless you can but foot at supermarket.

👤 sp332
Cough drops usually help me enough to get to sleep. Get the good ones like Fisherman's Friend or numbing ones like benzocaine lozenges. And there are cough suppressant drugs. They are central nervous system depressors though, so don't take so much that you stop breathing entirely.

👤 stop50
In those cases i took for the night something that reduces coughing for the night only and in the morning something that helps cozghing it out. for an permanent dry cough my doctor prescribed me codein, that effectivly reduced the coughing to 0.

👤 stephenr
... take cough medicine?