Cough drops = lollipops (and what I use instead)

If you’ve been sick this July, you’ve probably done something to your teeth you’d never do on purpose.

A lot of people are getting sick right now, in the middle of summer, and there’s a real reason for it.

Summer has its own bugs. According to the CDC, a family of viruses called enteroviruses is most common in summer and fall, right when everyone assumes cold season is over. They hit 10 to 15 million Americans a year, with a sore throat, a low fever, body aches, sometimes a queasy stomach.

The virus will run its course. What I care about is what it does to your mouth on the way through, because that’s where a summer cold quietly leaves a mark.

So here’s what I’d take out of your medicine cabinet, and the one thing I’d put in.

Put the cough drops down!

Look at the label. Most are sweetened with sugar, corn syrup, or glucose, and you hold one in your mouth, dissolving slowly, for twenty or thirty minutes, then reach for another an hour later.t

If you set out to feed the bacteria that cause cavities, you couldn’t design a better delivery system.

And before you reach for the sugar-free kind, most of those get their tartness from citric acid, and a repeated acid bath dissolves enamel just fine on its own. Sucking on anything acidic for twenty minutes at a stretch, over and over, while your mouth is dry, that’s the problem, sugar or no sugar.

Being sick means being congested, which means breathing through your mouth all day and worse all night. That dries out your saliva, and saliva is your whole defense. It rinses, it neutralizes acid, it hands minerals back to your enamel. So your mouth is bone dry, your buffer is gone, and you’re feeding it sugar or acid every hour for days.

That’s how people end up with cavities they can’t explain months later.

Here’s what that actually looks like, day to day:

• A cough drop or hard candy every hour or two
• Sipping juice, honey-lemon tea, or a sports drink all day
• Waking up with a mouth like sandpaper
• A fuzzy film on your teeth by afternoon
• Too wiped out to brush before bed

If two or more of those sound familiar, your last cold cost you a whole lot more than a box of tissues.

The reason a cough drop feels so good has nothing to do with the sugar. It’s actually the saliva that you’re craving. A raw throat and a dry mouth send your brain hunting for moisture, and a sweet taste is just the fastest way it knows to switch saliva back on.

And saliva is one of the best “medicines” your body makes. It coats the tissue that hurts, makes swallowing easier, and protects your teeth by neutralizing acid and handing minerals back to your enamel.

The catch is that a cough drop gets you there by bathing your mouth in sugar or acid to do the job.
What I keep in the cabinet instead…

→ This bee propolis throat spray.

Propolis is the resin honeybees use to seal and protect the hive, and it coats and calms a raw throat the way a lozenge does, with no sugar, no acid, and nothing to suck on for half an hour.

In a randomized, placebo-controlled trial, people using a propolis throat spray for a sore throat cleared their symptoms faster than the placebo group.

What it does is soothe the sore throat without bathing your teeth in sugar or acid to get there.

I’m picky about what goes in my mouth, especially when I’m already run down, and most throat products I cannot recommend, but this one is great.

But, keep in mind…

While you’re sick, sip water between everything, rinse with plain water after any sweet drink instead of letting it sit, and if you need something in your mouth, make it a sugar-free xylitol lozenge. It’s sweet, it’s soothing, and it’s the one kind that doesn’t feed cavities or erode enamel.

And if, god forbid, there’s any vomiting, don’t brush right after. Stomach acid softens enamel, so rinse with water and wait half an hour.

Feel better soon,
Mark

P.S. If you want my full sick-day playbook, the vitamin D, the zinc, the tongue scraping, the whole routine I run at the first throat tickle, I laid it out here. The spray is what I’d grab first, but there is more.

Citations:
Esposito, C., Garzarella, E. U., Bocchino, B., D’Avino, M., Caruso, G., Buonomo, A. R., Sacchi, R., Galeotti, F., Tenore, G. C., Zaccaria, V., & Daglia, M. (2021). A standardized polyphenol mixture extracted from poplar-type propolis for remission of symptoms of uncomplicated upper respiratory tract infection (URTI): A monocentric, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Phytomedicine, 80, 153368. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phymed.2020.153368