Cough is not a disease – it is the body’s normal mechanism for expelling foreign or unwanted material or secretions from your lungs. It is a God-given reflex like blinking. It protects your lungs. You cannot turn it on and off. So when you are coughing, it means something is irritating your lungs or trying to get into your lungs. If the cough comes from the lungs themselves – pneumonia, asthma, or bronchitis – we need to treat that problem. That does not mean we stop the cough since the cough is necessary to clean out the lungs. If the cough comes from post-nasal drip or comes from something trying to get into your lungs, then we need to stop that drip. Stopping the cough won’t stop the drip. So cough is actually helpful. The cough reflex is so strong there is no OTC medication that will stop it. Only narcotics are effective, and I rarely use this drug in children. So basically, I do not usually prescribe cough medicine. I will seek to identify the cause of the cough and treat the cause rather than the symptom alone.

Dr. Stephen Robinson