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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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.
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