Cough To Relieve Pain

The next time you get a shot or have to pull off a sticky bandage, try the “cough trick” to reduce the pain. In a recent study, doctors at Ernst Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald, Germany, drew blood from volunteers. When subjects used the cough trick, a single cough at the time of the needle puncture, they felt less pain than when they did not cough. Researchers are confident the cough trick is an effective way to reduce pain during peripheral venipuncture (drawing blood from an arm or leg vein), but they are still unclear as to how it works. If you try the cough trick for an injection, alert the nurse or doctor first so they can brace the puncture site against possible motion caused by the cough.