The Common Cold: Symptoms and Remedies

Transcriptions
Dr. Sanders: Hi, Dr. Sanders of Voyage Direct Primary Care. Today I wanted to talk about colds. It’s cold season right now, it’s in the middle of February, and we’ve got a lot of people out there with runny noses and congestion and sore throats and all that stuff and I want to talk about today what common recommendation that I have to folks that get colds, and then how to kind of avoid other things and whatnot.

So, number one: cold. You have the typical head congestion, lots of mucus, lots of mucus. Things you can do with that mucus, I like to do 1200 mg of mucinex, plain mucinex, just gyphenicen. There’s a lot of combo meds over there, and you don’t often need all the different various combinations. Those just add lots of side effects to your stuff and make you feel groggy and sometimes really dizzy and funky, so just plain mucinex, 1200 mg twice a day. Mucinex breaks up the mucus, makes it more like water, so doesn’t pull in your sinuses or in your ears or in your lungs, and predispose you to “opportunistic infections,” we;ll talk about that in a minute. 

The other one is sudafed if your blood pressure will tolerate that, another reasonable thing to do. Again, plain sudafed, it will dry up the mucus in your nasal terminix so you don’t create as much mucus and I just like those two medicines, honestly. There’s dexomethorphan, Sudafed DM, again that’s a cough thing, I like people to cough. Certainly if there’s a cough that’s keeping you up at night and all that then maybe you can add some of those things, but honestly there’s things I can add to your regimen that will be better than that stuff anyway. 

So, opportunistic infection. The average cold lasts three to seven days, usually. So that’s very common and you’ll eventually kick it, lots of water, lots of rest, lots of fluids and sudafed and mucinex, and most people just kind of, the virus will run its course and your immune system will kill it. However, sometimes that mucus pools, and it will pool in your sinuses, and it will pool in your ears, it might even pool in your lungs and will create what’s called and opportunistic infection. That’s when I want to hear from you. 

So if you’re past that seven day mark, and you’re having ear pain or you’re having sinus pressure, again past the seven day mark, so I’m ten days in and I’ve got this sinus pressure. Now you have a sinus infection. Well what about in the first three days and I get sinus pressure? Well that’s all viral, lots of mucus and it’s still pooling in your sinuses and causing pressure, but the chance of that being bacteria are much less. If you’re past that seven day mark and it’s starting to hurt, then yeah you probably got an opportunistic bacterial infection. Also you can have pneumonias in that same time frame. Kids get otitis, maybe like an ear infection, very very commonly as an opportunistic infection as well.

So be on the lookout for those as well, and I think that’s it. Dr. Sanders with Voyage Direct Primary Care, trying to teach the masses and talk about colds today. Thanks, bye.