Eli5 : how does cold medicine work? It alleviates symptoms so well and quickly, but doesn’t “cure” and I don’t understand how or why.
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The symptoms are mostly caused by your bodies immune response, extra mucus production, fever, inflammation. Cold medicine contains anti-inflammatories, fever reducers, pain medicine, cough suppressant. None of that actually attacks the bacteria or virus.
A virus is taking over cells in your sinuses and throat to replicate. Your body is doing tons of stuff, like creating extra mucus, to combat it. We don’t have reliable medicines to kill the virus, but your body will take care of that eventually. The goal of cold medicine is to stop your body from doing all that stuff it’s doing to fight the virus that sucks for you like generating tons of mucus.
For example, many cold medicines act as a vasoconstrictor (meaning they cause your blood vessels to contract). Since swelling and mucus production relies on your blood vessels expanding, a vasoconstrictor can help control these symptoms. Again, it’s not killing the virus. It’s just making life suck a bit less while your body kills it.
My understanding is that it dialates blood vessels in the nose and makes breathing easier. It doesn’t get rid of a cold, just alleviates the symptoms
No idea on the workings or whatever of cold medicine, but just wanted to say that this is an american thing 100%.
When we in the Netherlands get the cold, we just tough it out.
I’ve never heard anybody here take any kind of “cold medicine” ever.
the only thing that people take when they have a cold is maybe an asprine or paracetamol, that’s it.
I hear cold medicine being mentioned on American TV shows and movies and stuf and i sweat to god, i have no idea what they are talking about.
Afaik, we dont have a cure for the common cold. that’s kind of a well known thing right?
So i assume that cold medicine is just some form of drugs that make you feel better?
probably something that’ll end up being really adictive or bad for you in 5 years?
Gues I’ll hear all about it on John Olliver someday
The symptoms of a cold are due to inflammation caused by your body’s immune response to a viral infection. Cold medicine diminishes this primary (general) immune response, allowing you to feel symptom relief while your secondary (specific) immune response does it’s thing to kill the virus.
That is correct. Cold medicines help you to alleviate symptoms of a cold but the actual cause of the cold is the virus.
In other words, the symptoms will continue to flare up as long as the virus is still there and your body is reacting to it no matter how much cold medication you take.
A simple analogy is if you got a wood splinter stuck in your skin, you can take Tylenol or Advil to ease the pain. But as long as the splinter is still in there, there will be inflammation and pain no matter how much Tylenol you take. You have to get the splinter out to “cure”. In the case of a cold, that is the virus.
I can get into all the ingredients in cold medicines and what they do. Let me know if you need explanation in those.
You get a cold when germs have made their way into your body and successfully start to multiply. When the germs multiply, they are using your body’s tools and supplies and can cause damage. This is unwanted and once your immune system detects this, it starts to fight these germs to stop it, destroy them and get them out of your body. The weapons your immune system uses are largely what causes the symptoms (fever, sore throat, mucus, couching, headache etc.). Each of these things helps to slow or stop multiplying or to destroy the germ. For example, a fever is your body turning up the temperature to try and cook the germ like an egg so it can no longer multiply. While these things are happening white blood cells, which are basically your immune systems soldiers are on the front lines battling head-to-head with the germs to netralize them, surround them, destroy them and ship them out of the body. The only way to be cured is for your immune system to complete that task. Cold medications are chemicals that basically turn off or reduce the use of some of your body’s weapons systems or turn on other things that temporarily block them. As a result, you don’t feel as sick. The white blood cells are still doing their thing, but without the assistance of these other supports. There is ongoing research into how medicating symptoms affects the immune system and the length of a sickness.
Others have already mentioned it’s largely your own immune response that involves the uncomfortable symptoms of a cold, and now you’re left with the very sensible question of “wait, is suppressing that bad?”
The answer is *probably not*. You will still clear the pathogen in a matter of days and most likely the ultimate outcome will be exactly the same (i.e. total recovery from a simple cold). /u/Barry-umm claims that’s adaptive immunity at work, but that’s mostly false; the adaptive response itself takes several days to get going. It’ll deliver the necessary firepower to completely eradicate the pathogen eventually, but mechanisms of innate immunity are still doing most of the heavy lifting in that early stage even if you’re taking decongestants and such.
In short, the *very slight* immunosuppression from cold medicine is unlikely to make a real difference in the end, so people take it to not feel miserable in the meantime.
A cold is a virus.
You aren’t “cured” until your body’s immune system has successfully hunted down all the viruses.
The symptoms of a cold are a mix of (a) the virus making parts of your body misbehave and (b) your body trying to fight off the virus.
Cold medicine suppresses the symptoms of a cold. But since the virus is still there, you’re not cured.
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