[Optsol]

Recently I travelled to Zurich on business, and I picked up a viscious cold. They don't have drugstores over there like we have, and basically, you can't buy cough medicine in grocery stores or walmart-type stores there.

Instead they have kind of a combined pharmacy/hmo location -- where a licensed pharmacist/nurse performs a mini consultation, and heads back into a room of a billion drugs/herbs/weird stuff and comes out with a bottle of something for you.

It was obviously a weird experience -- but the lady there basically told me the same thing as this study.

The "dexo-blah-blah" (cough suppressent) doesn't do anything except let you sleep at night (she said never take it during the day).

The expectorant should only be taken immediately when you wake up in the morning, so that when you shower, the hot steam can get in there and you can hack out the overnight accumulation.

She also said that you never take both, since they aren't overly useful in combination, i.e., you're supposed to cough when you take the expectorant.

All in all -- I have never felt that expectorants/suppressants help me get through a cold faster -- but that they simply allow me to feel better while enduring them.