Relief For "Unproductive" Cough / Throat-Clearing (Hard To Expel Mucus)

[Arctic Fire]

I'm helping a relative who has what his doctors think is a viral respiratory infection. Over the last few days, he has developed a frequent -- sometimes near-constant -- sensation of mucus in his throat. He tries to get rid of it by clearing his throat or coughing, but he can have a lot of difficulty expelling the mucus. He spent hours this evening trying to clear his throat.

Stuff he's tried:
- He reacted badly to guaifenesin.
- He's gotten inconsistent results from pau d'arco tea.
- In an old post, Pranarupa suggests that CO2 can thin mucus and promote expectoration, so I had my relative try bag-breathing. Helps significantly, but not enough.

Complications:
- My relative is on clonidine, which gives him dry mouth. I'm wondering if it might also be making his mucus drier/thicker and harder to cough up.
- For reasons explained in the following thread, my relative does not tolerate a lot of standard, pro-metabolic Peaty supplements (e.g. thyroid, caffeine, aspirin):
Help Needed: Overcoming Sky-High Stress Hormones W/out Pro-Metabolic Supps

The doctors listened to his lungs recently and said they sounded good. Apart from the "unproductive" throat-clearing and coughing, the infection is not too bad so far, but this stuff is making him crazy.

Any ideas for helping him expel the mucus (or o/w reducing need for throat-clearing / coughing) and restoring his sanity will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Arctic Fire]

I see a bunch of helpful tips in this thread:
Cough Remedies

In particular, @tara and @ecstatichamster explain how CO2 helps relieve coughing and suggest holding breath (as long as comfortably possible) after coughing. I'll have my relative try this method.

Someone also suggested cyproheptadine. My relative already has dry mouth from clonidine, and I'm concerned it may be contributing to his difficulty coughing up mucus. Would cypro dry him out more?

Other ideas still very much appreciated.

 

[tara]

I'm not sure what Peat would recommend
This is not medical advice - I'm not qualified.

Personally, when I've had to fight infections involving coughs and colds, I've employed one or more of these:

- chin strap at night to help retain CO2
- short breath holds, as above, and effort to keep mouth shut. (For respiratory infections that are severe enough to restrict the lungs from breathing enough, I don't think those techniques for retaining CO2 would be relevant.)
- gargle a tiny bit of zinc
- fresh lemon honey drinks, maybe with fresh ginger too
- consider fresh garlic with food
- keep the gut transit moving - carrot salad etc. Reducing endotoxin load may be helpful. Raw garlic tastes good to me in raw carrot salad, so these two go well together, IMO.
- activated charcoal - also anti-endotoxin, but you do need to make sure to prevent constipation if you use this
- foods with vit-C - eg oranges, kiwifruit, blackcurrants if you can get them fresh and ripe
- rinse nasal passages with warm saline to help dissolve mucus
- consider steam - hot shower, or bowl of hot water with towel over head.
- 'Vicks vaporub' or similar on chest at night
- elevate bed slightly so head and chest are higher than legs (there's a thread on inclined bed therapy)
- gentle exercise - eg walking
- salty vege soups can seem appealing


I wonder whether it would be worth looking at the methylene blue threads?

 

[Trix]

Have you tried warm salt water @Arctic Fire? I think it thins mucus also. I use MB when this happens to me....just gargle and if there is an infection there, it will take care of that. It has helped me for sure.

 

[MoonDay]

I see a bunch of helpful tips in this thread:
Cough Remedies

In particular, @tara and @ecstatichamster explain how CO2 helps relieve coughing and suggest holding breath (as long as comfortably possible) after coughing. I'll have my relative try this method.

Someone also suggested cyproheptadine. My relative already has dry mouth from clonidine, and I'm concerned it may be contributing to his difficulty coughing up mucus. Would cypro dry him out more?

Other ideas still very much appreciated.

To me it sounds like silent reflux specially if the lung was clear. I have the similar experience.

 

[Arctic Fire]

Many thanks, @tara and @ecstatichamster. I had him try your short breath holds, and they worked beautifully. He's doing much better today.

 

[Arctic Fire]

Thanks for these tips, @tara. I appreciate your including some for fighting the infection as well as dealing with the throat-clearing and cough. The steam, garlic, vaporub, and elevated head and chest at night are stuff he's not doing that should make fairly easy experiments.

I had him try MB several days ago, and it did not seem to do much at doses he could handle. Good idea for a viral infection, though.

Personally, when I've had to fight infections involving coughs and colds, I've employed one or more of these:

- chin strap at night to help retain CO2
- short breath holds, as above, and effort to keep mouth shut. (For respiratory infections that are severe enough to restrict the lungs from breathing enough, I don't think those techniques for retaining CO2 would be relevant.)
- gargle a tiny bit of zinc
- fresh lemon honey drinks, maybe with fresh ginger too
- consider fresh garlic with food
- keep the gut transit moving - carrot salad etc. Reducing endotoxin load may be helpful. Raw garlic tastes good to me in raw carrot salad, so these two go well together, IMO.
- activated charcoal - also anti-endotoxin, but you do need to make sure to prevent constipation if you use this
- foods with vit-C - eg oranges, kiwifruit, blackcurrants if you can get them fresh and ripe
- rinse nasal passages with warm saline to help dissolve mucus
- consider steam - hot shower, or bowl of hot water with towel over head.
- 'Vicks vaporub' or similar on chest at night
- elevate bed slightly so head and chest are higher than legs (there's a thread on inclined bed therapy)
- gentle exercise - eg walking
- salty vege soups can seem appealing

 

[Arctic Fire]

Thanks, @Trix. No, haven't tried the salt water. How much salt works for you?

Will have him try gargling MB. Might have some nice anti-inflammatory action as well.

Have you tried warm salt water @Arctic Fire? I think it thins mucus also. I use MB when this happens to me....just gargle and if there is an infection there, it will take care of that. It has helped me for sure.

 

[Arctic Fire]

Interesting, @MoonDay. How did you treat your silent reflux?

To me it sounds like silent reflux specially if the lung was clear. I have the similar experience.

 

[Trix]

Thanks, @Trix. No, haven't tried the salt water. How much salt works for you?

Will have him try gargling MB. Might have some nice anti-inflammatory action as well.

just 1/4 teaspoon in 4 oz warm water will help. I use pickling or kosher salt and I just gargle and spit out, same with MB. The MB is very light blue, so you do not have to use a lot, but I'm thinking while gargling, you are getting some into through thin membranes. I put MB into a water bottle and keep by my sink, and use after brushing or when I have that mucosy feeling behind my throat.

 

[Arctic Fire]

Great. Thank you, @Trix.

just 1/4 teaspoon in 4 oz warm water will help. I use pickling or kosher salt and I just gargle and spit out, same with MB. The MB is very light blue, so you do not have to use a lot, but I'm thinking while gargling, you are getting some into through thin membranes. I put MB into a water bottle and keep by my sink, and use after brushing or when I have that mucosy feeling behind my throat.

 

[jb116]

To me it sounds like silent reflux specially if the lung was clear. I have the similar experience.

Yep, agreed.

 

[MoonDay]

Interesting, @MoonDay. How did you treat your silent reflux?

I have a thread here about my experience and symptoms on this forum and couple of people gave pretty good advises and i think you may find something useful there. It's called "LPR (Silent Reflux) going up to throat". Right now i m taking PPI and some vitamins, some rafting agent like Gaviscon after meals to keep the acid in stomach and the symptoms are i would say 80% manageable. So i will slowly lean off from PPI and hopefully it would not give me rebound reflux. I've read Jonathan Aviv's book called Acid Watcher Diet and it has some useful info about what food should be eating if have LPR(silent reflux) or just normal heart burn and other useful information about this disease in general. I would say he's pretty brilliant mind and invented the TNE procedure that goes down through nose and to the stomach to check any damages done by acid reflux for cheaper cost. I wish he was close to me so that he can be my ENT.

 

[Arctic Fire]

Thank you, @MoonDay. Will check out your LPR thread.

Your avatar wins the award for "most likely to star in a Danny Roddy video."

I have a thread here about my experience and symptoms on this forum and couple of people gave pretty good advises and i think you may find something useful there. It's called "LPR (Silent Reflux) going up to throat". Right now i m taking PPI and some vitamins, some rafting agent like Gaviscon after meals to keep the acid in stomach and the symptoms are i would say 80% manageable. So i will slowly lean off from PPI and hopefully it would not give me rebound reflux. I've read Jonathan Aviv's book called Acid Watcher Diet and it has some useful info about what food should be eating if have LPR(silent reflux) or just normal heart burn and other useful information about this disease in general. I would say he's pretty brilliant mind and invented the TNE procedure that goes down through nose and to the stomach to check any damages done by acid reflux for cheaper cost. I wish he was close to me so that he can be my ENT.

 

[goodandevil]

I'm helping a relative who has what his doctors think is a viral respiratory infection. Over the last few days, he has developed a frequent -- sometimes near-constant -- sensation of mucus in his throat. He tries to get rid of it by clearing his throat or coughing, but he can have a lot of difficulty expelling the mucus. He spent hours this evening trying to clear his throat.

Stuff he's tried:
- He reacted badly to guaifenesin.
- He's gotten inconsistent results from pau d'arco tea.
- In an old post, Pranarupa suggests that CO2 can thin mucus and promote expectoration, so I had my relative try bag-breathing. Helps significantly, but not enough.

Complications:
- My relative is on clonidine, which gives him dry mouth. I'm wondering if it might also be making his mucus drier/thicker and harder to cough up.
- For reasons explained in the following thread, my relative does not tolerate a lot of standard, pro-metabolic Peaty supplements (e.g. thyroid, caffeine, aspirin):
Help Needed: Overcoming Sky-High Stress Hormones W/out Pro-Metabolic Supps

The doctors listened to his lungs recently and said they sounded good. Apart from the "unproductive" throat-clearing and coughing, the infection is not too bad so far, but this stuff is making him crazy.

Any ideas for helping him expel the mucus (or o/w reducing need for throat-clearing / coughing) and restoring his sanity will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

N-acetylcysteine thins mucus but i dont think ray would recommend it due to contaminants. I'd take a look at gut function, maybe try well-cooked wheat bran or raw carrot. Lungs are the main organ of serotonin removal. Tianeptine can he very helpful for pulmonary conditions.

 

[Arctic Fire]

Thanks for these tips, @goodandevil. He eats a raw carrot almost daily. I'll look into tianeptine.

N-acetylcysteine thins mucus but i dont think ray would recommend it due to contaminants. I'd take a look at gut function, maybe try well-cooked wheat bran or raw carrot. Lungs are the main organ of serotonin removal. Tianeptine can he very helpful for pulmonary conditions.

 

[MoonDay]

Thank you, @MoonDay. Will check out your LPR thread.

Your avatar wins the award for "most likely to star in a Danny Roddy video."

haha! I love this Norwegian forest cat so fluffy and full of fur to keep it warm.

 

[managing]

Honey. Don't let saliva interact with it. Swallow by the spoonful and let it ooze down the throat. Manuka honey probably best, but any honey ought to help.

 

[Arctic Fire]

Thank you, @managing; will pass this tip along. I assume the point is to use the honey as a natural antibiotic.

Honey. Don't let saliva interact with it. Swallow by the spoonful and let it ooze down the throat. Manuka honey probably best, but any honey ought to help.

 

[yerrag]

I had a persistent low-level phlegm of a cough that just won't go away. I kept thinking it will turn the corner but it never quite made it to that turn. The cough was the type that just made it difficult to talk, as I kept getting interrupted by the cough, yet there was no phlegm coming out, but you could tell it was stuck somewhere in the windpipe.

I got into this condition, which I would call a low energy condition, when I got into some supplementation that made me urinate very often. Even at night, I would be waking up four times just to pee. With less sleep, and a lot more urination, I was probably not building enough glycogen stores, and I was losing potassium and thiamine, and perhaps a few more electrolytes such as sodium and calcium. But this all goes down to a heavy acidic load due to the supplement I was taking.

When I stopped taking this supplement, I quickly turned the corner. I did all the things mentioned above pretty much, they did not help at all for my condition. I was even on 6,000 mg of vitamin C, and it did nothing. I think it's because my liver and kidneys were focused on ridding my body of acid that my energy was being exhausted. Probably getting rid of the acidic condition was more important to my body, hence the cough was something that can wait. We can sense the cough, but we don't sense the acidic condition inside us.

You could probably ask your cousin a few questions relating to his lifestyle. What are the supplements and medicine he has been taking? What food does he eat. How much sleep does he get and how well is that going. Is he waking up a lot? Is he urinating a lot? My questions are directed towards the acid-base balance in his body. With my recent experience, I now realize how important that is, as it relates to our body's ability to produce energy with a good and efficient metabolism. A poor acid-base balance puts that out of whack, and if that is not being fixed, it puts the body in a low energy state that is unable to summon the strength to overcome pathogens.