Because the flu presents with such a wide variety of symptoms determining just what the flu is can prove to be a bit of a challenge. If you’re worried about contracting swine flu (H1N1) or any other variety of flu it’s best to know exactly what you’re dealing with.
Influenza
Influenza or the flu is a disease caused by a number of different related viruses that typically affects the respiratory as well as other areas and functions of the body. It is characterized by being exceptionally contagious and seasonally prevalent. In the winter time and through the spring this virus enters the body through the respiratory tract and manifests itself by causing a myriad of different symptoms.
Respiratory tract viral infections encompass both the common cold and influenza. What typically distinguishes the flu from a cold are a fever and other symptoms that incapacitate the person suffering from the disease–including lethargy and aches and pains.
The flu is also much more likely to lead to complications that can have long-lasting and potentially life-threatening results. Pneumonia is not an uncommon result of the flu.
Colds and flu are alike in that their viruses and cannot be treated with antibiotics designed to kill bacteria. As mentioned above there are antiviral medications that have proven to be effective against the flu; these are of no avail in fighting a cold of any kind.
Is stomach flu the flu?
What is commonly referred to as stomach flu is more correctly called gastroenteritis, another exceptionally prevalent viral infection. We may think that we have stomach flu when we are actually suffering from a bacterial infection, food poisoning or a host of other things that can upset our digestive systems.
Spreading the flu
Spreading the flu is easy to do, because there are so many ways to do so. Person-to-person contact, airborne droplets and secretions can rapidly spread the flu out among any number of different groups of people. Nursing homes and day care facilities, college dormitories and educational institutions of all kinds routinely suffer outbreaks of the flu.
More specifically, all you need to do to get the flu is inhale some droplets from the air on which the flu virus is riding, share an eating or drinking utensil with someone who is infected already, or even shake hands with someone who has shaken hands with someone else who may have stifled a sneeze a number of minutes ago. That goes a long way toward explaining why washing one’s hands frequently and considering the use of a hand sanitizer is recommended so very often for combating the flu.
How Many Kinds of Flu Viruses Are There?
The answer to that question might be more all the time. Scientists generally divide the many flu viruses up into three different types: A, B, and C. with a frequency that rivals some of the livelier science-fiction stories flu viruses mutate on an almost continual basis. That means that no one is ever completely or permanently immune to this disease.