KuromiGirl04Jan 11

How come there isnt really any OTC allergy meds for stuffy nose?

https://lemmy.world/post/41468053

How come there isnt really any OTC allergy meds for stuffy nose? - Lemmy.World

A couple weeks ago on New Year’s Eve, my mom had to run a couple of errands, and I asked her if she can pick me up some allergy meds whilst she was out. My nose was itchy and stuffy and I was having bad sinus headaches. When she came home about an hour later, she gave me a bottle of allergy meds and she told me “I looked in two different stores, but they don’t make over the counter allergy meds for a stuffy nose. At least, all the allerg meds i could find were for runny nose.” And I just find that weird. Because my nose wasn’t runny. It was stuffed to the point I could hardly breathe through it properly. But apparently cold and flu meds are for stuffy noses Why don’t they make OTC allergy meds like Claritin or Allegra-D for stuffy noses?

Show threadLumidaubJan 11
Does the cause of the stuffy nose matter? You want to make the swelling go down, regardless of whether it’s allergies or a cold. It’s just treating a symptom so any decongestant should work, no?
Show threadKuromiGirl04Jan 11

But I dont have a cold.

It’s just allergies.

I don’t want to take cold meds for just allergies

Show threadLumidaubJan 11
No, exactly, you want a thing that makes the swelling go down. That’s a decongestant. Decongestants do nothing about the underlying cause. It’s just most commonly used when people also have a cold.
Show threadhowrarJan 11
Meaning that it’s just marketed as cold medication without doing anything specifically for colds?
Show threadLumidaub
I mean, how do you treat a cold? Anything you do is treating symptoms and waiting for your body to get rid of germs.
Jan 11 at 4:45pmWeb
Show threadhowrarJan 11
I’ve always just done lots of water and waited it out. I see medication at the pharmacies labeled “cold medication”, but I never looked into what they do.
Show threadLumidaubJan 11

That’s perfectly fine. It’s not even really proven that additional water intake does anything at all. However, it usually makes you feel better which is why doctors recommend it and you should kep doing it. It’s ultimately treating a symptom, the miserable feeling.

The term “cold medication” is basically short for “take these things if you experience the symptoms commonly associated with the common cold”. There’s a reason why the question whether humans have “found a cure for the common cold” is a science-fiction thing - we can’t “cure” it. But a cold is (in most cases) so very harmless that it’s just not worth the effort to do more than treat symptoms. Most bodies are able to deal with the underlying causes just fine on their own if you just take a couple of days of rest to let yours to its thing.