[Case study] One chronic cough case

The patient, in her 30s, female, complained that she would wake up every midnight around 3 to 5, and cough vigorously for more than an hour until she coughed up the thick phlegm before she could fall asleep again, which lasted six months. She took both Chinese medicine and western medicine before, but ineffective. The patient is in good spirits, the face colour is white, the pulse is floating, the tongue is light and tender, and the middle and lower part of the coating is slightly thick. Very afraid of wind and cold. Prescribed the Jingfang formula for five days. The feedback did not wake up from coughing that night and only woke up one night, the sputum was also easy to cough up. And consolidate with the five days dosage.

This patient used antibiotics many times because of pharyngeal discomfort. Although the patient thinks there is improvement after taking the medicine, we don’t think it is wise to take antibiotics for such a long time for her situation. Antibiotics are in cold property in TCM view, and not good for the patient who has a cold constitution with cold hands and feet, like this patient. In this case, the use of antibiotics can only suppress the motivation that the body naturally tries to move the cold out, but will cause this kind of cough to prolong and hardly heal.  What we used are herbs with the warm property. When the cold in the body moves out, the cough will stop by itself.