To minimize the health risks of a non-mainstream treatment. 1  Discuss it with your doctor. It might have side effects or interact with other medicines. 2  Find out what the research says about it. 3  Choose practitioners carefully. 4  Tell all of your doctors and practitioners about all of the different types of treatments you use.
Skewed expectations may be one reason why antibiotics are over-prescribed, even for viral infections. In a phone survey, researchers asked 493 people how long they thought a case of ACI (acute cough illness, a.k.a. a cold that causes coughing) should last. At the same time, they looked at the existing medical literature to see how long ACI actually lasts on average. Survey respondents guessed that a cough should last 7-9 days. The literature, by contrast, showed that the mean duration of a cough is almost 18 days. Advertisement.
The average duration of cough, according to a recent study, is 18 days. If you think that seems like a long time, youâre not alone. A telephone survey by the same researchers found most people expected a cough to last seven to nine days.That dissonance between how long people expect cough to last and how long it really does sends a lot of people to the doctor.Cough is the most common patient complaint to primary-care physicians and accounts for more than 30 million doctorâs visits annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.hat dissonance between how long people expect cough to last and how long it really does sends a lot of people to the doctor. Cough is the most common patient complaint to primary-care physicians and accounts for more than 30 million doctorâs visits annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.