How do you know if you have the flu?

How do i know i have a normal flu and not the swine flu?

• I have a cold at the moment. I know not the flu but i'm just thinking for everyone else out their what is the difference in the symptoms?

• Answer:

  Regular flu kills 36,000 people a year in the United States and estimated 375,000 worldwide, About 90 percent of those deaths are among people older than 65 who already have health problems and cause their underlying disease to decompensate and then they don't have the reserves to fight the regular virus. Peoples are worried about the new swine flu outbreak because many of those who died in Mexico have been young and otherwise healthy individual. There are no particular symptoms that distinguish swine flu from other types of flu. Symtoms like diarrhea and vomiting are also associated with swine flu. Those symptoms can also be caused by many other conditions, and that means that you and your doctor can't know, just based on your symptoms. There is a similarity between the swine flu epidemic centered in Mexico City and the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918-19. Infants and elderly were spared. It was the young adults with robust immune systems that were the prime victims and the disease took them literally by storm. What happens with young and healthy patients is that their immune systems react so strongly that they can triggers something known as a "cytokine storm". In response to every infection, the body has a number of ways to fight back against the invading enemy. Cytokines are part of this defense. The name "cytokine storm" basically describes an over-reaction of a healthy immune system that has over-reacted and is damaging the body, causing failure of multiple organ systems. It can be triggered by many things, including viruses, although it's not common for human influenza A virus strains to cause it. The same thing occurs with new swine flu virus and the body has no defenses built up. When infected the body's own defensive systems are triggered to a powerful extent and cause havoc to the immune system. It’s something like dropping an H-bomb on a suspected burglar in your back yard. The result is to kill, or needlessly harm, the patient In children the immune responses are still developing, while the elderly immune function tends to be weaker due to the aging process. Both groups have weak immune system that is why they are vulnerable to complications from the regular flu and tend to get pneumonia and other opportunistic infections after being weakened further by the regular flu. Fortunately, they don't have systems that react strongly to the flu itself that can generate the cytokine storm. However, the healthy approximately 15 to 60 year old individual the most likely to actually succumb to the swine flu. A cytokine storm can overcome the nervous system and cause breathing and internal organs problems, which is why hospitals put critical flu patients on assisted machines. What really frightens experts in the pandemic field is the fact that most hospitals only have a few of these facilities and they are often in use for surgical or other critical patients. There is simply no way to provide interim support for tens of thousands of pandemic flu victims, even in advanced countries with a strong hospital system. The equipment just doesn't exist to put them all on breathing machines until their bodies are able to recover naturally.