Can You Have the Flu and Not Know It
Dispelling misinformation almost the flu vaccine, sickness, treatment, and recovery
If yous've ever had the flu, you know how sick you lot can be. Chances are practiced that some of the advice friends and family gave y'all about avoiding or dealing with the flu was wrong. There seems to be no shortage of misinformation and bad advice when it comes to dealing with the flu and the flu shot.
Hither are ten common myths most the flu.
- MYTH: You can catch the flu from the vaccine.
The influenza shot is made from an inactivated virus that can't transmit infection. And then, people who go sick after receiving a flu vaccination were going to get sick anyway. Information technology takes a calendar week or two to go protection from the vaccine. Just people assume that because they got sick afterward getting the vaccine, the flu shot caused their illness.
- MYTH: Good for you people don't demand to be vaccinated.
While it's especially important for people who take a chronic illness to go the influenza shot, anyone — even salubrious folks — tin can do good from beingness vaccinated. Current CDC guidelines recommend yearly vaccination confronting influenza for everyone older than 6 months of age, including meaning women.
- MYTH: Getting the flu vaccination is all you demand to practise to protect yourself from the flu.
There are a number of steps you lot can accept to protect yourself during flu season likewise vaccination. Avoid contact with people who accept the flu, wash your hands oftentimes, and consider taking anti-viral medications if you were exposed to the influenza earlier being vaccinated.
- MYTH: The flu is just a bad cold.
Influenza may crusade bad common cold symptoms, like sore throat, runny olfactory organ, sneezing, hoarseness, and cough. Only according to CDC, the 2019-twenty flu season led to at least 18 million medical visits, 24,000 deaths and 410,000 hospitalizations. The cumulative hospitalization rate for children ages four and nether this flu season was 95.1 per 100,000 people as of the week ending on Apr 25, 2020. Experts attribute the high number of pediatric deaths to a "double barrel" influenza season where both flu A and B were dominant. It's not too belatedly to get a flu shot. Even if information technology doesn't foreclose yous from getting the flu, it can decrease the chance of astringent symptoms.
- MYTH: You can't spread the influenza if you're feeling well.
Actually, 20% to thirty% of people carrying the influenza virus have no symptoms.
- MYTH: You don't need to go a flu shot every yr.
The flu virus changes (mutates) each year. So, getting vaccinated each year is important to brand sure you lot have immunity to the strains near likely to cause an outbreak.
- MYTH: You can take hold of the influenza from going out in common cold conditions without a coat, with wet hair or past sitting near a drafty window.
The only way to catch the influenza is past being exposed to the influenza virus. Flu flavor coincides with the common cold weather. So, people often associate the flu with a cold, drafty environment. But they are non related.
- MYTH: Feed a cold, starve a fever.
If you lot have the flu (or a cold) and a fever, you need more than fluids. There'southward lilliputian reason to increment or decrease how much you eat. Though yous may accept no ambition, "starving" yourself will accomplish trivial. And poor nutrition will non assist you go better.
- MYTH: Chicken soup will speed your recovery from the influenza.
Hot liquids tin can soothe a sore pharynx and provide much needed fluids. But chicken soup has no other specific qualities that can help fight the flu.
- MYTH: If you have a loftier fever with the flu that lasts more a twenty-four hour period or two, antibiotics may exist necessary.
Antibiotics work well against bacteria, but they aren't effective for a viral infection like the flu. Then again, some people develop a bacterial infection as a complication of the flu, so it may be a good idea to become checked out if your symptoms drag on or worsen.
The flu is a good example of how medical myths can go far the way of good medical care. When it's flu flavour, take the necessary steps to stay healthy. That includes separating fact from myth.
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Source: https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/10-flu-myths
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