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  • Cough reflexes

      • Posted Mar 7, 2010 7:44 PM


      Our lovely friend Angela from Hertfordshire Herb Society sent us this extract from their newsletter

      Whist laid low with a tickly cough that was a menace at night I read that if on retiring, you massaged your feet with a generous dollop of Vicks Vapour Rub and slipped on a pair of socks, that the coughing would cease within minutes of snuggling into bed. Hah, a likely story, I thought. I didnt have any Vicks and instead I used Ache Ease Warmer that Karen and Fiona make and it worked! So, please try this at home using whatever you have to hand.


      Our Ache Ease is a balm that we make for any aches and pains -it contains comfrey and heather infused almond oil, and rosemary n mint essential oils -in last years batch the comfrey and heather was collected in North Wales, Betws y Coed nr Snowdonia in fact the Heather was from a place called Devils Kitchen or Ceredwins Cauldron hehe....

      "Why might it work?"

      Some of the ingredients i.e. mint & rosemary essential oils and the horseraddish, act to dilate the blood vessels in the feet, and this triggers a reflex that quiets the cough.

      The remedy wouldn't have seemed so strange to doctors a hundred years ago, who often prescribed liniments and poultices containing mild irritants such as mustard, garlic, or camphor to the chest and to the soles of the feet to relieve symptoms of colds and whooping cough, these preparations have had the effect of stimulating blood flow to the skin. Catalogued under the heading of "counter-irritants" in early twentieth-century medical texts, such treatments were based on the principle that "internal morbid processes may at times be relieved by creating external irritations"
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