Hacker News Reader

Comment by amandalotti | Hacker News Reader

I'm an MD, and I used to avoid treating cold symptoms for these exact reasons, until I came down with a nasty sinus infection that was a complication of my cold virus. Basically, because I left my sinuses all stuffed up, I created a nidus for infection -- ie the perfect environment for bacteria to breed -- so I had a cold for a week, and then I had a bacterial sinusitis for another 2 weeks and finally broke down to take antibiotics. I could have avoided the sinus infection (and the antibiotics to tamp it down) if I'd just taken a decongestant when I had the cold. And the side benefit is my cold would have felt less miserable, too. And it wasn't about not taking time off from work because a lot of this was during a vacation anyway.

Point is, treating cold symptoms can actually prevent complications, so it's not all bad.

View on HN

Actually, the FDA recommends against using any cold treatments in kids, as they cause more harm than good:

http://globalnews.ca/news/1723414/are-your-young-kids-fighti...

In general all these cold and flu medications do is suppress your immune response, which is obviously not the smartest thing to do. You might get rid of some symptoms, but you're also hindering your body from actually getting rid of the infection.

The article above does say that in adults decongestants might be helpful. I think you need to know when it's a good idea to "help" your body treat the infection, and when you're just treating the symptoms and just hindering it. Most people just want rid of the symptoms.

In general all these cold and flu medications do is suppress your immune response

That's not true at all. Over the counter cold formulations contain one of four products: decongestant, cough suppressant, pain reliever and antihistamine.

None of those suppress your immune system.

EDIT: I think know what you meant now. You mean your immune system reacts to a cold by making you cough and the drugs suppress your cough (thus your immune response)? In that case, I see your point.

Aren't histamines part of your immune response, thus making antihistamines immunosuppressors?

Yes, they are. Also, I believe most pain medications (apart from opioids) work by knocking out some part of the immune response.

Now, even assuming that the medication doesn't actually interfere with your immune system and just gets rid of the symptoms and makes you feel great, you should be aware that your immune system deliberately makes you feel crappy ("sickness behaviour") so that you'll rest and give your immune system a chance to kill the infection. This is more an issue with the flu rather than the cold.

I think what threw me off is the use of the word "immune suppression". That word has a specific meaning when referring to drugs and tends to refer to drugs that to interrupt immune response far upstream. These drugs have severe side effects as your body can't fight invading viruses and bacteria.

I think the difference with cold remedies is that they tend to interfere with immune responses that are far downstream that tend to be more symptomatic, rather than major mechanisms by which the body's immune system works.

I'm just one data point, but my children usually suffer pretty badly when they have colds. I teach them that you can't fight the cold, but you can make it more comfortable to sleep (which goes a long way towards fighting the cold).

I give Acetaminophen/Paracetamol/Tylenol for pain, and a mucogenic (Guifanesin or the much better Mucosolvan/Ambroxol if I can get it from Europe) to thin out the mucus secretions.

It goes against instinct but making more mucus keeps it from building up and turning into that gunk that starts sinus/ear infections and never gets out of your lungs once the cold has passed.

I really wish Ambroxol would be approved in the USA, but apparently it's too old of a molecule to successfully recoup the FDA approval expenses.

Yes and certain foods can also be used to reduce symptoms, but of course they're not as powerful. Did that option fail for you?

The case I see more often is people get obvious cold symptoms and are back at work the next day. Thanks to symptom reducers they don't have to rest or eat properly for the condition, so their light symptoms persist for weeks. That also leads to complications.

Also I should have mentioned that most adults are not healthy and don't eat healthy to begin with, which creates a ripe market for band aid medications.

So, you've backed off your original point of not doing anything to reduce symptoms at all?

My original point was taking medications to suppress symptoms. For example they'll open your sinuses in 5 minutes and keep them open for hours.

Typically food will reduce symptoms by stimulating the immune system to work faster. Attempts at immediate relief will be short lived. That's how people traditionally treated disease. It's still a valid approach for light ailments where modern medicine can be a harmful crutch.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com