COUGH

BY: MIYINGO Ivan, MPhil, B. Pharm, MPS

COUGH

Background

Evolution or perhaps the creator cast a coughing spell unto our body’s defence mechanisms in a bid to aid the expulsion of foreign bodies and particulate matter out of our stuffed airways.

In the same token, a state-of-the-art muco-ciliary escalator system was installed along the linings of the airways to aid the upward movement of mucus and entrapped junk matter to be expectorated or swallowed.

This magnificent conveyer-belt, built against gravity, is generously powered by the upward beating of the finger-like cilia embedded in the linings of the respiratory highway.

With utmost minimalism, cough manifests as productive (chesty) or non-productive (dry, tight, tickly). This is in positive retaliation whilst-against side-lining all the other coughs that have been invented by Johnson & Johnson or Widespectrum’s marketing field agents, or both.

Clinical epithets have consistently rendered cough self-limiting, usually resolving in 3 or 4 weeks without the need for antibiotics. But the heavens know we are quite a stubborn species. Little Joe reads MIYINGO Ivan’s things literally in boustrophedon.

In nature, cough morphs into acute (≤ 3 weeks), subacute (3 – 8 weeks), and chronic (≥ 8 weeks). All coughs outside the acute-subacute window are better referred for more comprehensive assessment.

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