Don’t Worry About Cold Medicine for Toddlers
Your child has a runny nose. You think you will stop at the pharmacy to buy something to make him feel better. Not so fast! While antipyretics like Tylenol are safe for all ages, just about anything else, especially if they claim to cure a cough or runny nose, is either not recommended for young children or is complete rubbish.
First, the ones that are not recommended: The FDA warns against the use of any cold medicine (especially with decongestants and antihistamines) in children under four. These medications can be dangerous for toddlers, so even though they are in the pediatric medications section, it is because they are for older children and not preschool. (If you always read the label as you should, you will see instructions not to give them to children under 4.)
However, Melinda Wenner-Moyer discusses some of the scam products in the Slate article: Alongside these drugs, there are baby cough syrups on drug store shelves that cost just 9 bottles … well, mostly water. They are homeopathic “cures,” which means they are based on a completely false 18th century theory that diluted poisons and irritants can cure disease. This is a good starting point for developing real-world drugs (since many of them are poisons in the right context), but practicing homeopaths take this idea further, diluting and diluting until, in many cases, the active ingredient is so finely distributed that you cannot. be sure to get any in the bottle you bought.
But that’s if you’re lucky. Sometimes quality control is so poor that children are exposed to dangerous levels of the original ingredients. Wenner-Moyer writes:
Part of the problem is that the FDA does not regulate the safety or efficacy of homeopathic products at all. This lack of oversight extends to both adult and children’s medicines, but as children’s drug store shelves are more crowded with these products, it is especially important for parents to understand that there is no umbrella organization to ensure the safety of these products or to do what they did. … they say.
Check out the full article to learn more about the problem and how to tell which cough syrups are fake.
Not 4 Kids: Homeopathic “medicines” for colds and coughs for children don’t work. So don’t buy them. | Slate
Photo from the Boston Public Library .