Cold is a disease commonly found in society because people’s daily lives and easily transmitted among people. Generally, if an adult suffering cold, he do not panic and rarely to the doctor, but more often going to the shop and buy a common cold medicines. And it is quite appropriate steps for a new cold suffered for a few days, and must be accompanied by adequate rest, drink lots of water and eating nutritious. With such a simple way, the cold, were generally be healed. But for some people and situations you should be more critical in choosing cold medicines sold in the market.
Generally cold medicines on the market is a combination of some of the following: paracetamol, klorfeniramin maleate, pseudoephedrine, PPA (PhenylPropanolAmin), caffeine, codeine or dekstromethorphan. Chemicals are sold in dosage is within safe limits, but we have to knowing about the side effects.
Pseudoephedrine and PPA is a stimulator medicines for heart and blood vessels (adrenergic) and therefore should be avoided for those who suffering high blood pressure, and certain heart disorders. Both of these drugs potentially increase the work of the heart and blood pressure, which for those previously suffered from hypertension, especially older, these medicines will make your blood pressure higher. But of course this does not happen if consumed by people with relatively good blood pressure. So be careful for the hypertension of both drugs, especially if you are already old and blood pressure above 180 mm Hg, because the incident related irrational use of these two materials have been reported in medical journals.
Klorfeniramin maleate is known for making a real sense of sleepiness according to the dose. Generally cold medicines containing dose of 1 mg of this material. For some other drugs, the dose can be 2 mg and this causing drowsiness or lack of concentrations and reflexes. So it is advisable not to drink this substance of this for those who work requires a high alert and reflexes such as drivers, machinery operators, or students who are doing exams.
Be careful if you choose cold medicines containing paracetamol in combination with caffeine. Caffeine as we know it is a stimulant compounds contained in coffee, tea and chocolate. Now the same caffeine is used in combination with paracetamol because of the potentiation (strengthening the effectiveness) of paracetamol. But for those who are sensitive to caffeine (according Dr. Adamo who wrote the diet according to the blood group, those with blood group O are sensitive to caffeine), then the caffeine will cause dizziness, tension, sleeplessness, migraine attacks even for those who have talent migraine. So if you are sensitive to caffeine, or they who drink many cups of coffee in a day or you who have migraine, paracetamol should find paracetamol, without the combination with caffeine.
Paracetamol is safest than other types (such as aspirin, mefenamic acid, etc), but still have a side effects, especially to the stomach. Inflammation of the stomach even to gastrointestinal bleeding can occur if consumed for often, a long time and consumed in an empty stomach. 1 tablet paracetamol 500mg should be taken no sooner than every 4 hours.
Cough medicine, in principle, do not take cough medicine for random, adjust to your type of cough. In general there are two cough, dry cough and wet cough. For dry cough, the right medicines are codeine or dextrometorphan, these two drugs directly inhibit the cough center in the brain. Now imagine what happens if you are coughing up phlegm taking these drugs, what happens if your reflex cough is inhibited by the brain as a result of all mucous retained and assembled covering your respiratory track. Then you can be hard to breath and even fatal. Actually, is a bonus reflex given by GOD for our respiratory track to remove a foreign substance in it. So be careful in choosing cold medicine, if you have other illnesses before, such as hypertension, should consult a doctor as a wise move.
