Among the other fallout from my recent Houston trip, I ended up with a pretty nasty sounding cough. I didn't feel sick, but I sounded pretty bad. In fact, I got through a fairly intense "bootcamp" class with that cough, so I figured I was fine (side note: the running joke seems to be that I had mono).
Still, I sounded sick. It got bad enough that I figured I'd use a sick day a couple of days after I got back to rest up. A day of rest is usually enough to help me recover from colds & coughs, so I figured I'd be back to the grind the next day. And since I was being all good about taking care of myself, I went looking for cough medicine, too. If I was actually trying to make myself get better, it couldn't hurt to actually try to make myself get better.
Now I haven't been sick enough to take medicine in a while, so I had to ask where the medicine was. My mom pulled out a box of the stuff, and then wandered off to deal with something else. The first thing I noticed was that I didn't recognize the brand. It had this green leaf for a logo, and the box was labeled with "Bronchial Wellness Remedy." I actually remember thinking, "well, that's odd, but so long as it helps, whatever."
Regardless, I started looking for the directions for how often you're supposed to take it & how much you're supposed to take each time. What that meant was that I had to scan all of the "this stuff is the bestest, honest" claims. Every brand of medicine has this in some way or another, so it didn't surprise me to see that there. What did surprise me, though, were all of the asterisks and footnotes. Footnotes? Why would there need to be multiple footnotes on cough medicine?
As it turns out, the footnotes were for things like, "the FDA hasn't approved this statement" or "this product shouldn't be used to diagnose or treat illness." Really? This stuff is super awesome, but I can't actually rely on it to make my cough better? Why the heck else would I take it? It wouldn't be for the taste, that's for sure. I think they were going for a honey flavor, but let's just say I like the generic cough syrup taste better.
So, to recap: logo that is trying to be all Mother Earth, some sort of "all natural" remedy, no FDA approval, and it's not actually medicine in the commonly agreed-upon sense. I was drinking hippy, tree-hugger medicine.
And drink it I did. Again, I figured it couldn't hurt. It wasn't likely to make me worse, so in the worst case, I'd just make a face twice a day when I took the stuff. In the best case, it'd actually help with the cough.
In hindsight, I can't be sure if it helped or not. It's not like the cough magically went away as soon as I started taking the medicine. On the flip side, the cough did slowly start to subside, so maybe it was just working its magic slowly. Either way, it was a fairly small bottle, so I've almost finished it by taking it twice it day for three days.
You know, maybe I'm crazy, but I think I'm going to opt for one of those red cough syrups next time.
Still, I sounded sick. It got bad enough that I figured I'd use a sick day a couple of days after I got back to rest up. A day of rest is usually enough to help me recover from colds & coughs, so I figured I'd be back to the grind the next day. And since I was being all good about taking care of myself, I went looking for cough medicine, too. If I was actually trying to make myself get better, it couldn't hurt to actually try to make myself get better.
Now I haven't been sick enough to take medicine in a while, so I had to ask where the medicine was. My mom pulled out a box of the stuff, and then wandered off to deal with something else. The first thing I noticed was that I didn't recognize the brand. It had this green leaf for a logo, and the box was labeled with "Bronchial Wellness Remedy." I actually remember thinking, "well, that's odd, but so long as it helps, whatever."
Regardless, I started looking for the directions for how often you're supposed to take it & how much you're supposed to take each time. What that meant was that I had to scan all of the "this stuff is the bestest, honest" claims. Every brand of medicine has this in some way or another, so it didn't surprise me to see that there. What did surprise me, though, were all of the asterisks and footnotes. Footnotes? Why would there need to be multiple footnotes on cough medicine?
As it turns out, the footnotes were for things like, "the FDA hasn't approved this statement" or "this product shouldn't be used to diagnose or treat illness." Really? This stuff is super awesome, but I can't actually rely on it to make my cough better? Why the heck else would I take it? It wouldn't be for the taste, that's for sure. I think they were going for a honey flavor, but let's just say I like the generic cough syrup taste better.
So, to recap: logo that is trying to be all Mother Earth, some sort of "all natural" remedy, no FDA approval, and it's not actually medicine in the commonly agreed-upon sense. I was drinking hippy, tree-hugger medicine.
And drink it I did. Again, I figured it couldn't hurt. It wasn't likely to make me worse, so in the worst case, I'd just make a face twice a day when I took the stuff. In the best case, it'd actually help with the cough.
In hindsight, I can't be sure if it helped or not. It's not like the cough magically went away as soon as I started taking the medicine. On the flip side, the cough did slowly start to subside, so maybe it was just working its magic slowly. Either way, it was a fairly small bottle, so I've almost finished it by taking it twice it day for three days.
You know, maybe I'm crazy, but I think I'm going to opt for one of those red cough syrups next time.
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