Coughing? Try Vicks - On Your Feet

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Have you ever received the e-mail about putting Vicks on your kids feet to stop their coughing? The first time I read that e-mail several months ago I laughed out loud and deleted it.

Then I heard from 2 families that used this old wives remedy. I kind of chuckled and thought, “Okay, glad it helped.”

There is a basic article about it at Snopes.com and a similar article at About.com. The second article has this statement:

“Why might it work?” he [pediatrician Vincent Iannelli, MD] continues. “It could be that your child can still breathe the vapors, even if you put it on their feet. Or maybe the active ingredient, menthol, acts to dilate the blood vessels in the feet, and this triggers some reflex that quiets the cough.”

Fast forward to when my one year old was coughing regularly in the middle of the night. As I lay there unable to sleep and praying that everyone else would stay sleeping, I thought of using the Vicks. Why not give it a shot? The toddler was mostly asleep and getting medicine in her is tricky when she’s awake. So I found the foul smelling stuff and fumbled around for a pair of socks. It did the trick that night and we were both able to sleep.

I chalked it up to some strange coincidence, but was not against trying it again. I realized I was doing it often when I noticed that my one year old stuck out her feet if I picked up the jar of Vicks.

Today it’s not the one year old that has a cough it’s her big sister.

The 3 year old’s cough seems to get worse when she is not busy doing something. She likes wearing socks during nap time so, once again, why not? After applying the Vicks and putting the socks on her I went along my merry way into the Blogosphere.

Twenty minutes later I noticed that she is coughing regularly. “Ah-ha,” I thought. “It only works on little kids whose noses are closer to their feet.”

Two hours later I go to check on her. She has managed to keep herself awake between the coughing, the stuffed dog, singing to herself, and rolling around. Come to find out…she took her socks off and stuffed them down her pajama pants!

There she lay, coughing her deep throbbing cough, with her Vicks scented socks stuffed under her bottom.

To my credit I did not scream at her or tie her to the ceiling by her toes. I did calmly, through clenched teeth, tell her that I put the socks on her to help with her cough. “I am going to put these socks back on you. You are going to lay down and go. to. sleep. Right now.”

As I write this she is sleeping and not coughing. So I guess the Vicks on the feet came through once again.

So maybe it does work on the soles of their feet. However, it doesn’t work to put it on their bottoms.

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