Flu?
Every year, millions of people become sick with seasonal influenza, commonly called the flu, a contagious viral infection that attacks your respiratory system, including the nose, throat and lungs. During winter flu is very common and a lot of people have to be hospitalized because of a severe flu attack. The easiest way to prevent flu is to get a vaccine every winter. But there are a lot of misconceptions regarding this severe disease as well as its vaccine.
Flu History:
Flu is not a recent disease, the dreaded Spanish flu, a particularly vicious strain that emerged in 1918, killed between 20 and 50 million people worldwide, more than the number who died in World War I.
Another strain, the Hong Kong flu, killed about 1 million people in 1968-69. While the flu symptoms, fever, coughing, a painful sore throat, muscular aches, headaches and extreme fatigue are plenty debilitating, most people recover in anywhere from a few days to two weeks. In severe cases, flu victims get severe dehydration and sepsis, toxins in the blood that can cause the body's organs to go haywire and begin to fail. But the real risk may not be from the flu virus's direct effects, but how it weakens the body and makes a person vulnerable to other illnesses, some of which can be fatal. Many seasonal flu-related deaths actually occur a week or two after a person comes down with the flu, when they develop a secondary bacterial infection, such as bacterial pneumonia. People with asthma may experience potentially fatal attacks of that ailment when they come down with the flu.
Vaccines
It is true that the flu vaccine doesn't always work. It is effective in preventing a recipient from getting the disease about 60 percent of the time. How well it works depends upon age and health, young, healthy people are most likely to get the desired results. But even if you get a flu shot and still get the flu, your precaution didn't go entirely to waste. The vaccine can help to protect you against some of the disease's harsher complications. There is a common misconception that the flu season starts in February, whereas actually it starts in October-November. And the immunity that you gain from the vaccine generally will last from October until the flu season ends in the spring. In some cases, a person's immunity may last for as long as a year.
“Flu” and “Stomach Flu”
You've probably heard people over the years complain that they're feeling awful and can't keep down solid food because they've come down with something they call the "stomach flu." Unless you have a medical degree, the terms are easy to confuse.
Influenza is a respiratory illness that afflicts the lungs and breathing passages, not the gastrointestinal system. And while vomiting, diarrhoea and being sick to your stomach sometimes can be caused by influenza, usually in kids, those aren't the main symptoms of the flu, and they're often caused by something else. Gastrointestinal discomfort can be caused by a variety of other viruses, bacterial infections and even parasites. Most often, the stomach flu's unfortunate victims are suffering from some sort of food-borne illness.
Prevention is Better than Cure
Actually, there is no working method to prevent yourself from getting infected by the flu. If someone sneezes in a bus, chances are that all of the passengers will be affected. And even after that person leaves the bus, the viruses stay in the air for a long time. Also, a lot of people get sick not only for sneezing, but also for touching the surface which has been sneezed on or have been wiped. This is called fomite transmission, and you can minimise the chances of you picking up a virus this way by simply remembering not to put your fingers in your mouth, nose or eyes while you are out of the house. So, if you are sick, then you have to do a favour to the people by staying at home.
If you are sick with the flu, don’t take antibiotics. Because flu is caused by a virus, not bacteria. So they will go in vain, and you may also have to face the side-effects of the medicines without even getting better. Stay home, Stay hydrated and don’t forget to call the doctor if you think it’s getting severe.