Welcome To The Cold Truth

I work in a research lab that studies colds and, I wanted to share information with you to make for a healthier world.

There is one sure thing for colds and flu - there’s a lot of it about. How much is actually about varies from year to year, but you can be sure that you will catch them sometime. This must be the golden age of colds and flu. So many people crowd together indoors in winter, at home, at work, at school, and in travelling. This makes the chances of coming into close contact with someone who has one of the viruses so much more probable. Even though the viruses are quite hard to catch, this means there are a lot of chances when you are exposed to them in everyday life. They are also travelling all around the world in a matter of hours. Colds and flu are having a very successful jet-set life travelling all around the world, and not just where it is cold, they are also at home in the heat.

We are all exposed to these viruses on a regular basis, but we do not get an infection every time. The great majority of times our body’s defences work well and we are not infected. Less often we are infected, but our body’s defences act quickly to kill the infection, without us ever being aware that we have been infected. Less often still we are infected and suffer mild symptoms. Thankfully, least often of all, we catch the virus and have a really bad infection. How bad our infection becomes therefore depends on chance, the strength of the virus, and our body’s defences.

The usual way we catch the virus is to breathe them in on droplets in the air when someone sneezes. They can also easily be caught by touching something with the virus already on it, such as a cup, door handle, or telephone. The virus sticks to our hand, and then we touch our eye or nose and it sticks there. From our eye it is washed down with our tears into the nose.

Your first line of defence is the layer of mucus lining your nose. Unfortunately central heating can dry this, making it less efficient at preventing infections pass through.

The flu virus is more infectious than a cold virus because it can last longer in the air, and still be infectious. This is why a new strain of flu can be so dangerous, we may not have any natural resistance to it, and can spread all over the world so quickly, affecting so many people. This makes any new strain of flu a potential major killer on a world wide scale, as without any natural resistance to it flu can kill even fit and healthy people.

The virus attacks the cells lining the nose and throat, and infects them. It only takes one virus to infect one cell. Each infected cell is taken over by the virus, and it makes many copies of itself, kills the cell, and releases these new viruses to infect other cells. This happens so quickly that within 12 hours of first arriving there may be a million cells killed in the nose and throat.

The nose and throat are now awash with viruses, and this is the time when we are most likely to pass the infection on to someone else. Usually by blowing (or wiping) our nose with our hands, and touching something before washing them. What we touch could be a door handle, a light switch, a telephone, a newspaper or a cup. The virus is infectious, and waiting for someone to touch it, and then touch their eye or nose, and spread the infection. Sneezing also spreads the infection into the air.

You are now the reluctant owner of a cold or flu infection!