By Maxine Roeper Cohen, M.S.
Inevitably, we all come down with occasional head colds or upper respiratory sniffles. No matter what the weather, colds are always annoying and intrusive to our daily lives. We are particularly upset when our children succumb and their daily schedules are disrupted. Many times parents/caregivers take their child to the pediatrician where they look for a quick “fix.”
During that medical appointment, parents might ask the pediatrician to prescribe an antibiotic. Parents are anxious and might feel that the medicine will make the cold vanish or, at the least, lessen the cold’s severity or duration. That is not always the case and it’s important to know when an antibiotic prescription is advisable.
If the cold is a virus, an antibiotic is ineffective. Only when the child’s infection is bacterial will an antibiotic be useful. It is therefore most important to determine if the sniffles are viral or bacterial in nature.
Nowadays antibiotics are overprescribed because parents demand or expect them. One of the biggest public health concerns today is people developing a resistance to antibiotics. Parents have the best of intentions, but can set up their children to develop this antibiotic resistance if every time their child is ill, that child is given an antibiotic, whether it is useful to fight the infection or not.
Research from Cornell, George Washington, and Johns Hopkins Universities shows that parents/caregivers need to understand the difference between viruses and bacteria, and also know that taking antibiotics is not necessarily harmless. All medications have some possible negative side effects. Antibiotics will definitely not help cure a viral infection.
So, it’s summer and your child is suffering. If the cold is viral, encourage your child to take it easy and do quiet activities such as reading, crafts, and puzzles. Provide your child with plenty of fluids. In probably a week’s time, that bothersome cold will be gone. Oh, and a little chicken soup wouldn’t hurt!
Research referred to: “Fuzzy Reasoning by Patients May Lead to Antibiotic Resistance” –Cornell Chronicle, December 16, 2014.
Maxine Roeper Cohen is a Parent Educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County’s Family Health and Wellness Program. She can be reached at mc333@cornell.edu.