Question
What should I do when my 4-year-old baby keeps sneezing and coughing?
Answer
Traditional Chinese medicine believes that a cold is caused by external pathogenic factors, such as wind-cold, wind-heat, summer heat, and other evil spirits, which invade the body and lead to a disease. Since wind is the main evil factor, people also refer to the common cold as “wind damage” or “wind-cold.” The symptoms of a cold are generally mild, and in treatment, traditional Chinese medicine often advocates for dispersing wind and resolving the exterior, which can help achieve the goal of self-healing. The common cold is generally divided into three types: 1. Wind-cold cold: It often recurs during the early winter to the late winter and early spring, and summer overcooling can also bring it on. Symptoms include headache, aversion to cold, no sweating, feverish sensation, nasal congestion, clear rhinorrhea, cough, and sore throat. At this time, the throat of the patient is generally not red, the white blood cell count is not high, and Western medicine believes it is often caused by viral infection. Treatment involves using methods to disperse wind and warm the interior to relieve coldness. For children, drinking dilute ginger water or using dilute ginger water to mix milk can be effective. If there is a lot of cough with sputum, drinking a mixture of licorice root, dried tangerine peel, ginger strips, and honey water may help. 2. Wind-heat cold is the most common disease in clinical diagnosis. It can occur throughout the year but is much less frequent than wind-cold cold. Symptoms include severe feverishness, generally not afraid of cold, sweating, yellow snot, cough with yellow sputum, sore and swollen throat, thirst, dry stool, and yellow urine. Children’s medicine options include children’s cold syrup, Jian’er Qingjie Liquid, Wind-heat Cold Syrup, Isatis Root, and Shuang Huang Lian.