Being sick is one of the things we hate the most. Unfortunately, from time to time, we have to face that unfortunate scenario, even if we work hard to avoid it. When this happens, resting may be not enough. Then, we are forced to take medicines that, most of the time, taste awful.
This means that we have to face both the illness itself and unpleasant drugs. How could we survive this situation? Ice could be everything you may need.
At ITV Ice Makers, we want our readers to know the great benefits that ice can deliver to their lives. Having ice at hand when the time of taking medicine comes may not sound too normal. Well, it should and we explain you why.
How to Use Ice
If you are about to take any medicine with awful taste and flavor, it’s recommended to use ice cubes in the mouth, on the tongue. By placing the ice cube on the tongue, we’ll be numbing the glands that are present in the area. The taste buds can be gradually deactivated and for a brief time when we use ice.
Take into consideration that something similar happens when we drink very cold drinks or when we eat ice cream. Of course, taste doesn’t disappear completely, so we’ll be perceiving flavor at some degree, especially if the medicine has a very high chemical concentration, making its flavor too strong.
Ice Cubes’ Alternatives
If you don’t like the idea of getting an ice cube in your mouth, there are other alternatives you can use. For example, you can take a glass of water and put it in the freezer. After a few minutes, depending on the room, water, and freezer temperatures, the glass of water should be cold enough, just before icing.
At this temperature, we can take a sip big enough and keep it in the mouth for a few moments, until our taste buds feel numb while facing the cold water. This represents a simple alternative to ice, even if it doesn’t work as fast.
Another option, which is friendlier, is to get popsicles and eat one. Besides the treat we are giving ourselves, we need to use the popsicle to numb the tongue as much as possible. This requires us to be patient. We cannot simply forget about our goal and eat the ice pop.
Helping the Little Ones
When we talk about using ice to take nasty-tasting medicine, the first thing we may think of is about the children. It has been scientifically proven that child development greatly influences in the taste buds’ capacity and their preferences towards different flavors.
This means that kids can be more susceptible to some strong flavors, something that changes through the years. Because of this, a 3 years-old child may tolerate a strong-flavored medicine and forget that capacity years later, when he or she gets older.
So, perfecting the technique of numbing the taste buds by using ice is especially useful to parents, who are the ones that suffer when their kids cannot take the needed drugs to get better.
In this sense, emulsions and cough syrups may be the most difficult ones. So, besides trying to numb the child’s taste numbs, it can be a good idea to cool down the medicine for a few minutes in the freezer. In most cases, this allows the medicine to weaken its own taste while it maintains cold.
By reducing the child’s taste, we can make so much easier to take the medicine, especially when he or she is sick and the senses seem to be more susceptible.