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If the cold that ran through your family or your office like a hurricane, knocking down everyone in its path, has finally caught up to you, you may find this hard to believe: colds are not that easy to catch. Myths and old wives' tales notwithstanding, you do not catch colds by sitting in a draft, going out with a wet head, failing to wear a hat in winter, swimming in icy waters, getting overheated or chilled, or facing any other such environmental stress, including sudden changes in the weather.
Rather, you catch colds from other people who are already infected with a virus to which you have no preexisting immunity. Undue stress (especially the kind that results in disrupted sleep and haphazard meals), health-robbing habits like cigarette smoking and alcohol abuse, and preexisting health problems like asthma and chronic bronchitis can interfere with your body's immunological defenses and render you more susceptible to a cold. But you won't get sick unless you are also exposed to a cold virus to which you are susceptible.
Perhaps you try to keep your distance from someone with a cold. But it's not just obviously sick people who can give you their colds. Between one-half and three-fourths of those infected with cold viruses have no symptoms. In other words, they do not even know they might be capable of spreading cold viruses to other people and so are unlikely to take any special precautions. In addition, there is an incubation period of one to four days after a person becomes infected but before cold symptoms appear. During this time, the virus could unwittingly be spread to others. Any one of us, then, can be a Typhoid Mary of the common cold.
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Anti-Infectives
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