Laredo
The last time I had a really bad cough someone recommended ginger as a good remedy. At the time I did not have any root ginger in the house I just had ground ginger for cake baking. I thought what the heck I will try the ground ginger anyway. I made a cup of tea and added a level teaspoon of ground ginger and stirred well and then drank the tea, well it certainly helped me get rid of the cough. Using the ground ginger meant that I had to keep stirring the tea because the ginger settled at the bottom of the cup.
I have to be honest and say that it does not taste all that nice, even from a tea drinker like me. However it did work I used it again the next time I had a bad cough.
P.L.
Honey and lemon are very popular and many commercial cough remedies contain these two ingredients. A teaspoon of honey with a small amount of lemon juice (and a few drops of vinegar) mixed well is good. It's not to everyone's taste but costs very little to experiment with this.
?
Depends on what's making you cough. I cough because my sinuses go bonkers whenever the weather and barometer changes around here and I generally wake up with clogged sinuses that suddenly start to drain down my throat when I get up out of bed, making me cough. I just cough like the old person I am to clear it and eventually it does go away. I suck on Hall's cherry drops to keep my throat lubed. And if I start coughing at other times, it's usually because of my sinuses so I either take a sinus tablet or a Mucinex pill for mucus (depending on what's going on). If I have a cold, I just cough at will, stay home so I can get plenty of rest, drink hot clear drinks, have homemade chicken soup if I have chicken in the freezer to use (I love my pressure cooker) and say "excuse me" a lot even though usually there are only plants and fish now around to hear (I still say it to the furniture). My supervisor recommends brandy with a good dose of cayenne pepper, honey and some other stuff she throws into the brew (but she's a [w]itch so I don't know if that works for regular people), and she drinks enough wine and alcohol to knock herself out so I really don't recommend it to other people. Lots of water to you can get rid of as much coughing bacteria as possible through urine and sweat, nice hot showers (again to get the bacteria off your skin), change the sheets always makes me feel better although it probably doesn't "do" anything as far as curing me. And just letting me sleep.
Dick
Not sure it's a "home" remedy. It's from the family doctor we had during WWII. It still works as well as anything I've seen. Recently got a prescription for cough. It was ethyl alcohol and syrup, with a minuscule amount of codeine. Old Doc Snack's remedy was a shot of whiskey mixed with an equal amount of honey. Take a teaspoon of it whenever you need to. Worked better than the prescription stuff.
Anonymous
Honey and lemon juice, warmed does work to a degree. However no cough remedy really works. If it did there would not be so many on sale or listed here.