So cold meds are out. For kids, they not only don’t help, they can be dangerous. Pediatrician groups want the the Food and Drug Administration to just out and out ban marketing antihistamines, decongestants and cough suppressants to kids through age 6, but so far health officials are balking at that.

You gotta’ love their reasoning. The head of the FDA’s office on new drugs says that without drugs aimed at kids, parents might just end up doing something worse –  they’d give adult cold medicines to their kids instead.

Never mind the FDA. .

Dr. Karl Chun

There’s is a growing body of research that  over-the-counter medications are not effective for colds anyway, or at least no more effective chicken-soup. Dr. Karl Chun, a pediatrician at Fairview Children’s Clinic, says he prescribes the least medical remedies of all.

Here are his tips for helping little kids (or not so little) through a cold, just in time the sneezy season.

Keep their heads up in bed.  That reduces the cough reflex. And secretions won’t pool in the back of their throats. Sleeping on the stomach can do the same thing.

Get steam to back of their throats. That means chicken soup, or broth, herbal teas, and a humidifier. That helps loosen things up.

Lemon and honey for a cough. Warm, diluted lemonade can help coughing spasms.  So does honey, but don’t give it to kids under the age of one year. Honey could carry spores from the bacteria that causes tetanus, but unlike older kids, infants don’t have the right stomach acids to kill them.

That’s the basic list. Do you have any tips you can share?

This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 7:09 am and is filed under colds and coughs, fda. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.