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You certainly know how you feel-bad: achy, tired, with a stuffed head, a tickle in your chest, and a throat that might have been rubbed down with sand paper. But do you know what you have? Is it the flu, debilitating and, for some, potentially deadly? Or is your attacker one of the more than 200 varieties of viruses that can cause the pesky but rarely dangerous common cold?
The question is not just a matter of idle medical curiosity Knowing what you have, and what you can expect to happen to you in the days ahead, can and should determine how you treat yourself and those around you. Despite the difficulties people have in distinguishing a cold from the flu (a confusion aided and abetted by the dozens of over-the-counter remedies for "colds and flu"), the two ailments actually share little more than the fact that they are both viral infections that attack through the respiratory system. But the viruses responsible are light-years apart in how they behave. Just as you wouldn't punish a mischievous child in the same way as you would a dishonest one, neither should you treat colds and flu as if they were one and the same.
Besieged by advice from advertisers, well-meaning friends, and enthusiasts for health foods, vitamins and other supplements, and beguiled by the nostrums of homeopathy, naturopathy, and other quasi-medical disciplines, many people end up overtreating or mistreating their symptoms. And in the process they often make matters worse. Possibly the most serious common error is to press the doctor for a prescription for antibiotics, which are useless against the viruses that cause colds and flu. When antibiotics are overused (and inappropriate use is a form of overuse), they can lose their power over the bacterial infections they are designed to treat.
Children are especially likely to receive unnecessary and sometimes harmful cold remedies ministered by over-anxious, if well-meaning, parents who feel they must do something other than watch youngsters "suffer" with the sniffles for a few days. Although children are the primary vectors of colds and frequently spread them to parents, siblings, and friends, they are also the least bothered by them, and recover from them more quickly than adults do.
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Anti-Infectives
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