The surprising miracle hack (get it?) behind how cough syrup works

I got a bad cough about two months ago.

It wasn't COVID-19 and I'm pretty sure it wasn't the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) virus (although maybe it was). But after a week, a dry cough persisted — making it impossible to sleep lying down. I had to sit up all night, which is far from preferable.

I saw my doctor and she prescribed two inhalers and suggested cough drops and cough syrup.

I followed her instructions: Slowly, the cough got better. A little better, but not much better. Was the inhaler working? Seemed like it.

Then Mrs. Brad and I went on vacation, thinking the cough was behind me. It flared up again. I had a bad cough on vacation! It had been more than three weeks and I kept coughing. I had to buy more cough drops. More cough syrup (which is expensive). Even more cough drops.

Eventually, I checked online for various ways to combat a persistent dry cough. Maybe my doctor missed something. Maybe there was a trick.

The medical websites said to drink plenty of water (I did,). They said to use cough drops or other hard candies (I did).

Cough syrup? Most posts honed in on the same idea: Cough syrup doesn't make your lungs or your throat better. It's a trick. It fools your brain into stopping the cough reflex, so it's not that special. Cough syrup is kind of a scam.

That's what they said, but here's what I thought: SERIOUSLY? COUGH SYRUP FIXES MY BRAIN? THAT'S AMAZING!

Apparently, cough syrup skeptics want readers to know that cough syrup doesn't fix your lungs. So what? It fixes our brains!

Coughing apparently happens because we have a cough reflex!

One post said there is very little evidence that cough works better than a placebo. Another said, "Cough suppressants work in the brain stem to stop the cough reflex. Basically, they trick your brain into thinking that it doesn't need to cough, but the icky stuff in your lungs that's causing the cough remains the same."

First of all, the use of the word "icky" made me question whether a scientist wrote it. But secondly, if syrup stops me from coughing, isn't that good? Do the cough syrup deniers think I want to keep coughing?

The question isn't whether I should use a medication that works in the brain stem to stop the cough reflex. Of course I should! The real question is why this technology hasn't gone further.

If we can stop the cough reflex, could we also have something that stops the sneeze reflex? What about the laugh-at-inappropriate-time reflex? What about the worrying-about-dumb-stuff-while-trying-to-go-to-sleep reflex? What about The Reflex reflex, where you automatically start dancing to the 1990 song by Duran Duran?

A persistent cough is no joke and cough syrup only slows, doesn't stop your coughing. I acknowledge that the principal benefit of many cough syrups is they make you sleepy, giving you much-needed rest..

But I learned something, which is still important to me as I continue to recover from my coughing: Cough syrup magically tells my brain stem to quit making me cough.

For my money, that's better than anything it could do to help my lungs, even as I inexplicably dance to The Reflex.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.