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.
In: 7
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.
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