Relieving cough with boiled rice water

Last Updated on April 30, 2023

Recently, my entire family has been down with cough. Even in my office, my boss and some of my colleagues are having very bad cough. I forsee the situation would get worse as many people who is not even coughing would start to cough after taking mandarin oranges or lokam which are in season now (dunno what they put in the mandarin oranges but we usually avoid them).

Once the cough gets prolonged, it would usually run its course. Usually, no antibiotics or cough mixture would be able to relieve the condition- as confirmed by my boss who have drank more than a bottle of cough mixture and taken 2 courses of strong antibiotics. Nothing seemed to work. Worse still, if you start waking up in the middle of the night coughing as if your lungs wanna come out (I really understand how you feel there).

If you are coughing so badly, and willing to try anything- I would like to suggest a simple home remedy that may just gradually (no miracles here) relief the condition. It works in the principal that the hot boiled white rice water would heat up your lungs and body- something that antibiotics or cough mixtures can’t- and it is effective especially if you have thick phlegm.

Drinking hot boiled white rice water to relieve cough- few times a day

All you need to do is to cook the white rice with lots of water- as if you are cooking rice porridge. But note that you are interested in the boiled rice water:

I personally tried the remedy and it had greatly relieved my cough- else I would be up every night coughing.

Preparation

Take a handful of rice and boil with 6 bowls of water. Boil until the consistency is thick and gummy. If you have a slow cooker, you can cook in the slow cooker for about 4 hours.

If you cook in a pot, you need to constantly stir it. Until the rice is cooked and the water looks gummy and thick- the gummier and thicker the consistency, the better.

After that, sieve the water with a fine sieve. The water from the boiled rice must be drank hot– as hot as you can swallow (of course not so hot that it turns your tongue and throat).

You would not be able to drink everything up in one go- put in a good hot water flask so that you can drink later.

Remember, if the water gets cold or lukewarm, you cannot drink it anymore. Heating it up in the microwave would have no use. As for the rice, you can take it as porridge. Hot porridge is good to warm up your body.

Avoid fatty or fried food as it would irritate your throat and suppress the effectiveness of medicine. Drink lots of warm water- keep a hot water flask next to you and use it to mix with cold water.

Hopefully, this would help your cough to be better.