Alvin Silverstein - Handy Health Guide to Colds and Flu

RUNNY NOSE, SORE THROAT, AND FEVER, OH MY!

We all face health problems once in a while. Maybe you have come down with the flu or you have a cavity. Perhaps you have ADHD or diabetes. Some people need glasses to see better or are allergic to bee stings. These handy guides teach you about your health and how all the parts of your body work together to keep you healthy most of the time.

About the Author

Dr. Alvin Silverstein is a retired professor of biology at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. Virginia Silverstein translates scientific Russian and is a professional author. Together they have written more than 200 books for young people. Laura Silverstein Nunn has coauthored more than 100 books with her parents.

Nobody likes having a cold. It can make you sneeze, cough, and have a runny nose.

Ah-choo! You know that miserable feeling. In fact, you may be having it right now. Your nose is so stuffed up, you cant breathe. Youre coughing. You feel hot and tired and just plain awful!

Sounds like you have a coldor is it the flu? People sometimes confuse the common cold with the flu, but the two illnesses feel very different.

Doctors call colds common colds because they happen so often, and to so many people. In fact, chances are that you or someone you know has had a cold in the past two weeks.

Colds are not very dangerous. People usually get better in about a week, even if they dont take medicine. But colds can make you feel miserable. People miss more days of school and work because of colds than for all other diseases combined!

The flu is not as common as the common cold. Though millions of people come down with the flu each year, chances are you will get a lot more colds over your lifetime than you will get the flu.

When the flu hits you, though, its symptoms pack a powerful punch. They can make you feel so tired and achy you cant even get out of bed! Flu is also much more dangerous. It makes the body so weak that some people may wind up with another illnessand that may be life-threatening.

Why do we get sick more often when it is cold outside? In cold weather, people stay inside with the doors and windows closed and spend a lot of time with other people. This makes it easier for germs to move from one person to another. You can get a cold or the flu in the summer, too. And in tropical places, where it is hot all the time, people catch a lot of colds and flu. They get sick more often when it is rainy.

Can you tell the difference between a cold and the flu? What can you do to feel better when you get sick? Lets find out more about these illnesses.

Have you ever stayed home from school because you had a cold?

Kids get sick more often than anybody else. The average child has six to ten colds a year. As we get older, we catch fewer colds. The average adult gets two to four colds each year. You can expect to have from 50 to 100 colds in your life.

The common cold is an illness that causes a stuffed-up, runny nose and a sore throat. It is caused by very tiny germs called viruses.

Viruses cannot live by themselves. They can live only inside a living animal or plant. The viruses that cause colds can live in the soft, wet lining inside a persons nose and throat. More than 200 different kinds of viruses can cause colds.

Viruses are much too small to see. In fact, you cant even see a virus with a magnifying glass or a typical microscope. Scientists need special electron microscopes to see a virus. Nobody even knew viruses existed until about a hundred years ago.

How small is a virus? Picture this: If a virus were as big as an ant, then you would be as big as the whole Earth!

Viruses are tiny. These cold viruses have been magnified many times.

Viruses need to be inside people to make more viruses. They invade the cells in the lining of the nose and throat and turn the cells into virus-making factories. When a cell is full of viruses, it bursts open and the viruses spill out. The viruses are carried out of the body in the wet, slimy liquid that drips out. When you cough or sneeze, tiny droplets of liquid spray out and carry viruses with them. When other people come into contact with these fluids, the viruses can invade their bodies, too. Thats how viruses can spread from person to person.

By the time you feel a cold coming on, you already have it. It can take up to two days after you are exposed to cold viruses for symptoms to develop. Colds often start off with a runny nose or a scratchy throat, then other symptoms may develop. You feel the worst after a few days and then you start feeling better until the symptoms are gone in a week or two. Bad colds are sometimes called the flu, but the real flu is caused by a different group of viruses.

Before people knew about viruses and other germs, they had some strange ideas about what caused illnesses. The ancient Greek doctor Hippocrates thought that colds were caused by waste matter in the brain. When the waste overflowed, he said, it ran out the nose.

In the Middle Ages, people thought illnesses were caused by demons. They said that sneezing was very dangerous because a persons soul might be sneezed out, and a demon could sneak in and replace it. Saying God bless you! when people sneezed was a way to protect them from demons. Covering your nose and mouth when you sneezed could also protect you from demons.

Some cold viruses are called rhinoviruses. Rhino comes from the Greek word for nose. A stuffed-up, runny nose is called rhinitis. Rhinoceros comes from the same Greek word. When your nose is stuffed up with a cold, it may feel as big as a rhinos nose!

Flu, short for influenza, is an illness that affects the respiratory system (the breathing passages and lungs). Its main symptoms are fever, chills, cough, extreme tiredness, muscle aches, and headaches. It is caused by viruses, but they are different from the ones that cause colds.

Only two main kinds of viruses can cause influenza: type A and type B. Thats far fewer than the hundreds of cold viruses around. But the flu viruses are constantly changing. The flu that is going around one year is usually somewhat different from the ones that were around the year before.