THE CASE
Following up on the recently famous youtube video, I have just read an article in the New Yorker Magazine about Nicholas White, the man trapped in a lift (an elevator) for 41 hours. Bad enough, but deep in the article is an even more appalling fact:
The "Door Close" button in most lifts doesn't work.
Apparently the button's only function is to make the occupant think that they have some sort of control. Can this really be true? We get into a lift and press the required floor button then jab at the "Door Close" button a few times..... hey presto the door closes, thus reinforcing our belief that the button works. But the truth is the action and the effect are completely unlinked, it is a timer that closes the door not the button.
Similarly most pharmacists and doctors do not really believe that cold remedies work. Their only function is to make you think that you can do something. The cold will last from ten days to three weeks with or without treatment. But patients persists in buying their favourite nostrums, because just like "you press the button and the door closes", you take the remedy and the cold goes away. Again the action and effect are completely unlinked, it is the passage of time that cures the cold not the remedy.
MY VERDICT
The treatment that works is the one you were using when you got better. There is no evidence based research indicating that over the counter cough and cold treatments have any effect on shortening the duration of illness.
NOTE
To be absolutely correct the button apparently does work when the lift is in service mode, accessed by a key.
FURTHER READING
Coldfx: More Hype that Hope for Colds and the Flu
http://sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/cold-fx/
The "Door Close" button in most lifts doesn't work.
Apparently the button's only function is to make the occupant think that they have some sort of control. Can this really be true? We get into a lift and press the required floor button then jab at the "Door Close" button a few times..... hey presto the door closes, thus reinforcing our belief that the button works. But the truth is the action and the effect are completely unlinked, it is a timer that closes the door not the button.
Similarly most pharmacists and doctors do not really believe that cold remedies work. Their only function is to make you think that you can do something. The cold will last from ten days to three weeks with or without treatment. But patients persists in buying their favourite nostrums, because just like "you press the button and the door closes", you take the remedy and the cold goes away. Again the action and effect are completely unlinked, it is the passage of time that cures the cold not the remedy.
MY VERDICT
The treatment that works is the one you were using when you got better. There is no evidence based research indicating that over the counter cough and cold treatments have any effect on shortening the duration of illness.
NOTE
To be absolutely correct the button apparently does work when the lift is in service mode, accessed by a key.
FURTHER READING
Coldfx: More Hype that Hope for Colds and the Flu
http://sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/cold-fx/
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