Why does a doctor advise a person with a cough to gargle?!
Question: I know it sometimes has a soothing effect on the throat, but that's just about it..but what else? I could always take a lozenge instead.
Answers:
Most lozenges have sugar which sooth but don't kill germs.
Q: What exactly is the mechanism/physiology of relief that gargling with warm salt water has on a sore throat?
A: This is an educated guess.
Sore throats are sore due to inflammation. Usually, the inflammation is due to a viral or bacterial infection (the common cold, and strep throat, are examples of each). However, sore throat may also be related to allergies or physical injury to the throat. In each case, an inflammatory response has been triggered. Pain, swelling and an itchy or irritated sensation are the common symptoms of this inflammatory response.
The medical term for swelling is edema. As part of the inflammatory response, there is an increase in the water content of the involved tissues. With respect to sore throat, a sense of fullness and difficulty swallowing are both related to edema of the tissue lining the throat (mucosa).
Water tends to follow salt. Anyone who has ever salted a snail knows what happens to the snail. Here’s a less disgusting analogy: have you ever salted slices of raw eggplant? The salt draws moisture from the eggplant; after a few minutes, you can see beads of fluid on the surface of the eggplant.
Everyone has a different recipe for a salt water gargle, but all recipes tend to be fairly salty. If the gargle has a higher salt concentration than your intrinsic salt concentration, it will tend to draw out some of the edema fluid from the mucosa of the throat. This will make SOME of your "sore throat" symptoms better. The relief is very real, but also tends to be short-lived, since the gargle has done nothing to remove the cause of the sore throat.
In some cases, gargling with salt water also has a cleansing action. If you are suffering from postnasal drainage due to a bacterial sinus infection or allergies, the mucus which drains from your nasal cavity is full of chemicals that tend to promote an inflammatory response. As this stuff drains down the back of your throat, it leaves a trail of inflamed tissues in its wake. Frequent gargling with salt water will help minimize this problem.
As with everything else in medicine, you can certainly overdo this one! Make the gargle salty enough, and you will dessicate the mucosa of the throat. This could lead to even greater irritation than what you started with!
Other Answers:
you may cough while gargling and choke on the water.
To keep it moist so that when you cough it wont cause you so much pain.
They tell you to gargle with something like salt water etc. because it helps kill germs in the throat that are causing the mucus in your throat that is inevitably making you cough. You cough involutarily to get rid of the mucus in your throat.
Answers: