Flu overview.

The more you know about flu, the more effective measures you can take to prevent the disease and avoid flu or swine flu complications.

Flu, shortened from influenza, is highly contagious respiratory disease caused by influenza A or B viruses. Flu spreads through the respiratory tract.
The common cold and flu simptoms are basically the same, but flu is much worse. Sneezing, coughing, headache, sore throat, congestion - these are symptoms of both cold and flu. But when you caught flu you can have high fever and feel tired and exhausted. As a result of flu the illness can develop to pneumonia - very dangerous disease, whereas after common cold you don't have serious complications.

You may think that it's a good idea to take antibiotics. But the answer is no. Antibiotics help in case of bacterial infections and both cold and flu have viral origin. Antibiotics are helpful in treating bacterial infections as a result of cold or flu.
There are no specific medicine to treat cold, but some antiviral medications can defeat flu.

The flu virus is spread between people in close contact through inhaling the air with flu virus or through contact of surfaces with respiratory secretions. If you make hand contact with infected person the flu virus is spread when you touch your nose, mouth or eyes. Remember, the more often you wash your hands, the less is risk to catch flu.
Modern medicine is quite effective in flu prevention, but still more than 30 thousand people die in the United States every year because of flu.

To prevent some strains of flu, nasal spray (like FluMist) or a flu shot can be used. Nasal vaccine FluMist contains weak flu virus and may cause light flu simptoms. The flu shot contains inactivated virus and cannot cause the flu. After taking one of these vaccines your immune system starts to develop antibodies that protect you from the influenza virus.

There are three types of flu viruse - A, B and C. Each type can mutate or develop new strains, that's why your immune system has to produce new antibodies for each flu strain. Type A mutates more often and causes epidemics once in 1-2 years. Type B causes epidemics every 3-5 years. Type C usually has no influenza symptoms.