Bananas can make your cough worse

Last week, as I popped my head out of my room to call in my next patient, a heard a small girl cough, a pretty terrible cough.

Half an hour later, she and her mother were still waiting to see one of the paediatricians, and since I was on my lunch break, I decided to go over and talk to them.

Before I talk about Melissa, the two year old with the nasty cough, I should explain that a cough isn’t actually an illness.

Coughs are often due to an infection, such as a cold or a flu, or a symptom of a more serious condition like bronchitis or asthma. This is why you should see a doctor if it lasts more than a couple of weeks.

There are two types of coughs: dry and wet. The good thing about the wet kind, is that the mucus coughed up brings with it some of the nasty germs lurking inside you.

COLOUR OF MUCUS

The colour of the mucus also tells you something: yellow or green means you have a bacterial infection.

Melissa had a dry and chesty cough, so I thought I’d offer some simple dietary suggestions that could help. My first recommendation was to cut out dairy produce.

Her mother, Pauline, told me that Melissa did not drink milk since it triggered eczema. Instead, she gave him formula milk made from soya.

While soya does indeed have many health benefits, it is only beneficial if prepared in a certain way (tofu). Other types of soya aren’t as good, especially not for children.

Pauline was worried about Melissa’s bones, so I suggested other bone-building foods, namely green leafy vegetables, unsalted nuts, ground seeds (sesame in particular), turnips and fish, especially the small ones with bones for when Melissa is older.

As we talked some more, she told me that Melissa loved bananas. Unfortunately, bananas can make you quite congested. It is therefore advisable to stop eating them if you have a cough. Eggs do much the same thing, so I asked Pauline to cut these out too, though her biggest problem was how she would convince her daughter to stop eating bananas, at least until the cough went away.

The last thing that came up was tea. Although Melissa drank it daily, she should not have been. There is so much to be said about children drinking tea, I will write an article about it, so keep reading.

I also asked Pauline to give Melissa plenty of water, to keep her throat well lubricated and help to thin the mucus, to make it come out much easier.

Another good trick to help quiet the coughing is to rub some camphor ointment, menthol salve, or pure peppermint oil on your child’s chest every three to four hours.