People infected with an influenza or cold virus become contagious 24 hours after the virus enters the body (often before symptoms appear). Adults remain infectious (can spread the virus to others) for about 6 days, and children remain infectious for up to 10 days. Factors that may increase the risk of catching a cold are fatigue, emotional stress, smoking, mid-phase of the menstrual cycle, and nasal allergies. Factors that do not increase the risk of catching a cold include cold body temperature (Example being out in the cold or enlarged tonsils). General health status and eating habits do in that they have impact on your immunity and “fight or flight” in fighting off infection as opposed to getting sick due to a healthy body overall.

Watch for flu symptoms and in comparison here with the cold symptoms when trying to decipher what you have before going to the doctor.  Signs and symptoms (S/S):

Flu s/s=High Fever lasting 3 to 4 days, prominent headache,  general aches and pains which are often and severe, fatigue & weakness that lasts up to 2-3 wks., extreme exhaustion-early & prominent chest discomfort, cough-common & severe at times.  *Note weakness and tiredness can last up to a few weeks with the Flu.

Cold S/S-Fever-rare, headache-rare, slight aches, mild fatigue if even present, extreme exhaustion (never occurs), Chest discomfort-mild if present, cough-moderate and hacking cough with sore throat sometimes present.

Common symptom: Stuffy nose is present, a common symptom for children is diarrhea and vomiting.

Regarding cold symptoms also be aware for these specifics, which include:

-Sore throat-usually is going away in about a day or three; nasal symptoms include runny nose and congestion to follow, along with a cough by the fourth or fifth day.  Also, fever is uncommon in adults but a slight fever is possible.  For children fever they can have with their cold. *                                                                                                                                         -With the symptoms above you can also have the nose that teems with watery nasal secretions for the first few days later these become thicker and darker. Dark mucus is natural and does not mean you have developed a bacterial infection, such as a sinus infection.

**Know several hundred different viruses may cause your cold symptoms. A virus cannot be treated with an antibiotic since antibiotics can only fight off bacterial infections.*

Now let’s review what we know now, which is the common cold and the types of flu (Types A,B, and C), we know their symptoms (the cold versus the flu), we even know  The Flu statistics of how many are affected yearly with what complications can arise, based on Part 1 and part of Part 2.   The most important part of this article is letting my readers know or be aware of factors in prevention.

Let’s prepare ourselves in knowing factors for prevention of these 2 BUGS THE COLD and THE FLU (particularly) with knowing what to do when you or someone in the home has it.

The biggest factor in prevention of the COMMON COLD or THE FLU is living out your life utilizing great healthy habits and that would be washing your hands with soap and water often, especially:

• Before, during, and after preparing food

• Before eating

• After using the bathroom

• After handling animals or animal waste

• When their hands are dirty

• When someone in your home is sick                                                                                            FOR AVOIDANCE IN GETTING THE FLU OBTAIN YOUR VACCINE YEARLY!  The flu virus enters through the eyes, nose, and mouth, so those with the flu or a simple cold should never touch their faces unless they’ve just washed their hands.Avoid sharing food, drinks, and utensils.   Do not share drinking glasses-and to break off portions of food and to pour off beverages before consuming them.  Keep tissues handy. The flu spreads when infected people cough or sneeze. So adults use them and encourage your kids to cough and sneeze into a tissue or their upper arm if tissues aren’t available. (Coughing into a bare hand can also spread germs if kids touch something before they can wash.)Ask your doctor about antiviral medications. Although not approved for use in children under 1, these drugs can be used in older children & adults to prevent influenza or even can treat the flu in the first 2 days of onset.
• Keep your face off-limits; This means the following:

• Live a healthy lifestyle. MOST IMPORTANT!!! A healthy lifestyle may help prevent them from getting sick in the first place.
• Use those wipes! Flu germs can live for several hours on surfaces such as countertops and doorknobs. Wipe down contaminated objects with soap and water.
• Let your kids, including adults stay home when they’re sick. They’ll feel better sooner and won’t pass their illness on to their classmates or for an adult passing it on to colleagues at work especially the first few days when contagious so don’t go into work those few days.
• For a child and an adult keeping the same routine schedule.                        For a child – keeping the same schedule for play time, bath, pajamas, bottle, story, then bed. Keeping a routine helps, that is one that is healthy of course.
• Make sure you or your sick child who is sick gets enough sleep.      Too little sleep can cause the feeling of run-down and lower the immunity. Yet a National Sleep Foundation poll found that most children need 1 to 3 more hours of sleep than they’re getting every night usually. How much should they be getting? Experts recommend 11 to 13 hours a night for preschoolers and kindergartners and 10 to 11 hours for school-aged children. Adults 8 hours of sleep a day if not more when sick with a cold or the flu. How to make sure this can be accomplished: Establish an earlier-bedtime routine, this just takes discipline by the parent or yourself if an adult that is sick.
• Keep your distance. Stay clear of people who are sick-or feel sick.
• What to do when you have the cold or, worse, the flu:  Take care of yourself with rest, eating and drinking properly, going to sleep earlier, going to your doctor for treatment and changing your life style to a more healthier one with always practicing good health habits in your daily living=PREVENTION if your not already or just improving on those good habits your doing now.
•  *Recommended is to check with your MD on any changes with diet or exercise or daily habits especially if diagnosed already with disease or illness for your safety.****
• 1-Wikipedia “the free encyclopedia” 2013 website under the topic Influenza.3-Web MD under “COLD, FLU, COUGH CENTER” “Flu or cold symptoms?” Reviewed by Laura J. Martin MD November 01, 20115-Scientific American “Why do we get the flu most often in the winter? Are viruses virulent in cold weather? December 15,
• 4-2013 Novartis Consumer Health Inc. Triaminic “Fend off the Flu”
• 2-Kimberly Clark Professional website under the influenza.
•   REFERENCES FOR PART 1,2, AND 3 ON THE COLD AND THE FLU ARE:

“Civilization, the orderly world in which we live, is frail. We are skating on thin ice. There is a fear of a collective disaster. Terrorism, genocide, flu, tsunamis.”

Zygmunt Bauman (87 y/o and born 19 November 1925) is a Polish sociologist. Since 1971, he has resided in England after being driven out of Poland by an anti-Semitic Polish political crisis campaign.

The weather has been warm for winter but it will be getting colder soon.  Those bugs that are common in the winter are 2 Viruses =The COLD and THE FLU.

HOW THEY ARE DIFFERENT:

Both influenza and the common cold are viral respiratory infections (they affect the nose, throat, and lungs). Viruses are spread from person to person through airborne droplets (aerosols) that are sneezed out or coughed up by an infected person, direct contact is another form of spread with infected nasal secretions, or fomites (contaminated objects). Which of these routes is of primary importance has not been determined, however hand to hand and hand to surface to hand to contact seems of more importance than transmission. The viruses may survive for prolonged periods in the environment (over 18 hours for rhinoviruses in particular=a common virus for colds) and can be picked up by people’s hands and subsequently carried to their eyes or nose where infection occurs. In some cases, the viruses can be spread when a person touches an infected surface (e.g., doorknobs, countertops, telephones) and then touches his or her nose, mouth, or eyes. As such, these illnesses are most easily spread in crowded conditions such as schools.

The traditional folk theory that you can catch a cold in prolonged exposure to cold weather such as rain or winter settings is how the illness got its name. Some of the viruses that cause common colds are seasonal, occurring more frequently during cold or wet weather. The reason for the seasonality has not yet been fully determined. This may occur due to cold induced changes in the respiratory system, decreased immune response, and low humidity increasing viral transmission rates, perhaps due to dry air allowing small viral droplets to disperse farther, and stay in the air longer. It may be due to social factors, such as people spending more time indoors, as opposed to outdoors, exposing him or her “self” to an infected person, and specifically children at school. There is some controversy over the role of body cooling as a risk factor for the common cold; the majority of the evidence does suggest a result in greater susceptibility to infection.

The SIMPLE COMMON COLD:

The common cold (also known as nasopharyngitis, rhinopharyngitis, acute coryza, head cold) or simply a cold is a viral infection of the upper respiratory tract which primarily effects the nose. There are over 200 different known cold viruses, but most colds (30% up to 80%) are caused by rhinovirusesThis means you can pass the cold to others, so stay home and get some much-needed rest for yourself and not passing it on to others for the contagious period at least.

If cold symptoms do not seem to be improving after a week, you may have a bacterial infection, which means you may need antibiotics, which only kill bacterial infections not viral.

Sometimes you may mistake cold symptoms for allergic rhinitis (hay fever) or a sinus infection (bacterial). If cold symptoms begin quickly and are improving after a week, then it is usually a cold, not allergy. If your cold symptoms do not seem to be getting better after a week, check with your doctor to see if you have developed an allergy or inflammation or the sinuses (sinusitis).

Influenza is commonly referred to as “the flu”, this is an infectious disease of birds and mammals caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae, the influenza viruses. The most common sign or symptom are chills, fever, runny nose, coughing, aches and weakness to headache and sore throat. Although it is often confused with other influenza-like illnesses, especially the COMMON COLD, influenza is a more severe illness or disease caused by a different virus. Influenza nausea and vomiting, particularly in children but these symptoms are more common in the unrelated gastroenteritis, which is sometimes inaccurately referred to as “stomach flu” or “25 hour flu”. The flu can occasionally lead to pneumonia, either direct viral pneumonia or secondary bacterial pneumonia, even for persons who are usually very healthy. In particular it is a warning sign if a child or presumably an adult seems to be getting better and then relapses with a high fever as this relapse may be bacterial pneumonia. Another warning sign is if the person starts to have trouble breathing.

Each year, 10% to 20% of Canadians are stricken with influenza. Although most people recover fully, depending on the severity of the flu season, it can result in an average of 20,000 hospitalizations and approximately 4000 to 8000 deaths annually in Canada. Deaths due to the flu are found mostly among high-risk populations, such as those with other medical conditions (such as diabetes or cancer) or weakened immune systems, seniors, or very young children. There are 3 types of influenza viruses: A, B, and C. Type A influenza causes the most serious problems in humans and can be carried by humans or animals (wild birds are commonly the host carriers). It is more common for humans seem to carry the most with ailments with type A influenza. Type B Influenza is found in humans also. Type B flu may cause less severe reaction than A type flu virus but for the few for the many can still be at times extremely harmed. Influenza B viruses are not classified by subtype and do not cause pandemics at this time. Influenza type C also found in people but milder than type A or B. People don’t become very ill from this Type C Influenza and do not cause pandemics.

The common cold eventually fizzles, but the flu may be deadly. Some 200,000 people in the U.S. are hospitalized and 36,000 die each year from flu complications — and that pales in comparison to the flu pandemic of 1918 that claimed between 20 and 100 million lives. The best defense against it:   a vaccine once a year.

References for Part 1 and 2 on the two bugs The FLU and The COLD:

1-Wikipedia “the free encyclopedia” 2013 website under the topic Influenza.

2-Kimberly Clark Professional website under the influenza.

3-Web MD under “COLD, FLU, COUGH CENTER” “Flu or cold symptoms?” Reviewed by Laura J. Martin MD November 01, 2011

4-2013 Novartis Consumer Health Inc. Triaminic “Fend off the Flu”

5-Scientific American “Why do we get the flu most often in the winter? Are viruses virulent in cold weather? December 15, 1997

This time of year is for us, our family and loved ones a magical moment. So engrave in memory of our children the best moments that we can have a family!!

Have a great holiday season!

DRINK,  BE MERRY,  BUT BE SAFE!!!

“Nearly half of all women in the United States experience heightened stress during the holidays. And what do these women rely on to get them through the holidays? 41 percent of women use food and 28 percent use alcohol as comforting mechanisms during that time.”

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION (APA)

Know the true reason your rejoicing,  the birth of  Christ not just present giving.  Play Christmas music like it’s going out of style; it will calm your nerves and help you to re-focus your Christmas resolve. Attend church. Be open to various charities gathering help for the holidays.  Give gifts of the heart.  Make some time just for you as well as for your immediate family; extended family gets the next shift, followed by church and friends. 

Kathryn Elizabeth Jones Writer from her 7 ways how to get through the holiday stress.

Navigating through a jolly holiday season and wishes for a wonderful new year when living with a chronic, debilitating health condition or caring for someone might have you thinking, “this is no holiday!” But researchers are documenting how expressing thanks can lead to a healthier, happier and less-stressed life. Noted expert Robert Emmons defines gratitude in part as, “… an affirmation of goodness. We affirm that there are good things in the world, gifts and benefits we’ve received. This doesn’t mean that life is perfect; it doesn’t ignore complaints, burdens, and hassles. But when we look at life as a whole, gratitude encourages us to identify some amount of goodness in our life.”

Family caregivers are often portrayed as the epitome of goodness, and rightly so. Time and again spouses, adult children, other relatives and friends who care for loved ones with Alzheimer’s, stroke, cancer and other health conditions, dig deep to put the needs of another before their own needs. They move personal life priorities to the back burner — work, family, travel, their own health — to ensure the safety and well-being of another person. But no well is bottomless and no caregiver can give in a limitless manner, always being kind, helpful, supportive, compassionate, honest and more, without doing harm to themselves. In this season of giving, acknowledgement of the giving that goes on all year long can get overlooked.

As a caregiver, there are ways to cultivate a greater sense of satisfaction coupled with a culture of gratitude this holiday season, both for the person receiving care and for yourself. To get a start, try these exercises to help focus your actions:

Connect with people: Holiday time is both about spending time with people we truly enjoy, but also with those to whom we feel obligated. Here’s a very specific exercise to help identify who receives your precious time during this season. Write down the names of family and friends with whom you’re likely to spend significant time this holiday season. Put a (*) by the names with whom you have a relatively simple, uncomplicated, mutually beneficial relationship. Mark an (x) by those people who make you feel uncomfortable (tense, inferior, frustrated, guilty, etc.). Ideally, would you like to spend (1) more, (2) less, or (3) about the same amount of time with each person on your list? Put a 1, 2 or 3 after each name.

Embrace the season’s activities: We often enter into the holidays wanting to be inclusive and accommodating. Every year family and friends gather to share meals and exchange gifts. Why should this year be any different? Write down all of the activities you look forward to or anticipate doing as part of the holidays. Here are a few to help you get started: Buy gifts, decorate, make travel plans, plan and shop for holiday meals, cook, bake, clean, host guests, host grandchildren, volunteer for charitable causes, participate in spiritual or religious activities, participate in special family traditions (gather at the family cabin, make tamales, sing at the local nursing home) and more. The list may sound both endless and compelling. Now revisit your list. Put a (*) by the activities that make you smile and feel content. Mark an (x) by the activities that you do not have time to fully enjoy, or that seem to have lost their meaning or become a burden for you, the person you care for or your extended family.

Cultivate a sense of goodwill towards yourself and others: At this time of year there is more pressure to appear happy and joyful. Feeling and expressing your true feelings, especially if these truths appear negative to others, can be discouraged and seen, at the least, as not acting in the spirit of the season. Here are some of the feelings that family caregivers have expressed to us, as well as some from those on the care receiving end of the relationship. See if any of these fit for you: Ambivalence, anxiety, anger, boredom, disgust, embarrassment, exhaustion, frustration, happy, grateful, grief, guilt, impatience, irritability, jealousy, loving, lack of appreciation, loneliness, loss, an opportunity to give back, peaceful, resentment, sadness, satisfaction, scared, thankful, tired, worried, hopeful. List any other feeling you know to be true for you. Now put a (1) by the feelings that get in the way or disrupt your life, a (2) by the feelings that just are there but don’t really get in the way, and a (3) by the feelings that you want to cultivate to feel more often.

What is doable and what reflects wishful thinking? To complete this exercise, draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper. On the left side of the page note your 1’s from the first exercise, now write down the (*)’s from the second exercise, and add the 3’s from the third exercise. List the remaining items on the right side of the page. When you have finished scan your lists. What steps can you take to include more of the people, activities and feelings from the left side of the page into this holiday season or the near future? What items reflect wishful thinking but more realistically represent something to hope for some time in the future?

Here are few examples of actions to take this season:

The gift of listening: Putting everything else aside to focus your full attention on a loved one. Listen to them tell you about their life; ask questions about the origin of family stories and rituals, share a chuckle over past adventures.

Communicate gently but honestly: Tell the person you care for or the person who cares for you, sensitively but honestly, what you need and how you would like to meet that need. It’s better than speaking angrily or resentfully when the other person doesn’t know why. Sometimes you might just need some time away from the care situation. Try these suggestions for communication with someone living with brain impairment.

Revisit expectations: If you are caring for a family member living with moderate to severe dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, making heroic efforts to include your relative in a holiday gatherings can be tense and exhausting. Sometimes it can work wonderfully when family members and friends pitch in so that you can take a break to enjoy yourself. But, too often caregiving tasks and anxiety about actions by the person with dementia can drain any enjoyment from your time at the event. Encourage family and friends to spend time with your family member with dementia by visiting the person where they live, rather than at loud, busy family gatherings. A smaller gathering in more familiar surroundings gives visitors and hosts a much greater chance for meaningful time together. Here are more tips for navigating dementia care during the holidays.

Cultivate gratitude in your life: What would it feel like to focus more of your thoughts on what is good in life? If you have time, consider keeping a gratitude journal, writing down a few items each day. You’ll find a link to more about this project in the resource guide below. Reading just a few sentences from your journal before you go to bed and when you wake up can help you to focus on the good in your life. As a way to communicate within the family, some people create a “gratitude bowl” where everyone in the household jots down things they are grateful for on a slip of paper and places them in the container. Read a few of the slips out loud each day when you’re together at meal time or post a note on the refrigerator.

Navigating the holidays on top of all of the other daily activities of life for those living with chronic illness can be fraught with frustration and a sense of disappointment. Giving thought to what is truly important for you and your family, while taking steps to communicate your interests to others can open up opportunities for you to have a less stressful and more satisfying season.

Striveforgoodheath.com wishes all readers old and new Happy Holiday Season and Safe One!!

In their chapter on evolutionary psychology as it relates to homicide in the book “Evolutionary Psychology and Violence,” David M. Buss and Joshua D. Dunley hypothesize that aggression is a trait inherent in humans that dates back to the prehistoric era. People had to compete with one another for resources.

Is this what our society has resorted back to with how far we have gone in technology, science, disease?   Very sad if true since I am a human and in this category.

People are often confronted with feelings of disappointment, frustration and anger as they interact with government officials, co-workers, family and even fellow commuters to people just in society. Most can control their actions to the extent that relatively few of these interactions end in a radical action like being racist to violence.

What help build a individuals feelings to turn out in a negative result (like bullying someone to protesting to worse rioting to violence or killing) is factors.

Factors being:

1.YOUR CHILDHOOD UPBRINGING. Your childhood builds the foundation of how you turn out as an adult. If you have good upbringing where there are good morals, values, ethics with limitations or rules and regulations in what you can and cannot do with mommy and daddy overlooking from a distance in watching the child’s actions/interests/who they play with/what they’re doing on the computer or watching on T.V or even listening to music will help give direction for their child to be effective in society. Including, as the child shows good choices than more independence in getting older with still guidance and direction as needed. Remember your a young adult at 17 and a full fledged adult at 21 years of age to make all decisions in your life.

2.BEING AN ADULT.   This includes accepting the turn outs of how a situation finally results; before the final result if you did everything you could legally try to reach your hope of a turn out and did reach it great, it makes you a stronger person. Now lets say you didn’t than acceptance is necessary of what the result turned out as which also makes you a stronger person with being an asset in the community. Than your next step whether it be alone or in society overall move on without being an insult to the community where it effects the society in a negative way (like killing 2 innocent police officers just for wearing the color blue in uniform, predjudice=a radical action).   Being able to allow acceptance in your life which doesn’t always turn out the way you want it to helps you move on in life making you less out to be radical in your behavior. Take the riots (which they call protesting a radical approach from Missouri to New York) and see what their results turned out to be. Stopping people from getting to a destination point who had nothing to do with what the protestors were protesting about, to damage of property of innocent people’s business to the worse DEATH. Like this radical move did anything productive for humans in society. It obviously didn’t.

First lets look at what turns anger into action? Mostly cognitive control, or to use a less technical term, self-control.  University of Michigan professor of social psychology Richard Nisbett, the world’s greatest authority on intelligence, plainly said that he’d rather have his son being high in self-control than intelligence, one year ago. Self-control is key to a well-functioning life, because our brain makes us easily [susceptible] to all sorts of influences. Watching a movie showing violent acts predisposes us to act violently. Even just listening to violent rhetoric makes us more inclined to be violent. Ironically, the same mirror neurons that make us empathic make us also very vulnerable to all sorts influences. This is why control mechanisms are so important. If you think about it, there must be control mechanisms for mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are cells that fire when you grab a cup of coffee (to give you an example) as well as when you see someone else grabbing a cup of coffee. So, how come you don’t imitate all the time? The idea is that there are systems in the brain that help us by imitating only “internally”—they dampen the activity of mirror neurons when we simply watch, so that we can still have the sort of “inner imitation” that allows us to empathize with others, without any overt imitation. The key issue is the balance of power between these control mechanisms that we call top-down—because they are all like executives that control from the top down to the employees—and bottom-up mechanisms, in the opposite direction, like mirror neurons. Whereby perception—watching somebody making an action—influences decisions—making the same action ourselves.

Neuroscience uncovered why people behave so violently looking into the Virginia Tech Massacre in 2007 with many other like incidents also which were still a small percentage of people. What happens in these individuals is that their cognitive control mechanisms are deranged. Mind you, these individuals are not out-of-control, enraged people. They just use their cognitive control mechanisms in the service of a disturbed goal. There are probably a multitude of factors at play here. The subject is exposed to influences that lead him or her to violent acts—including, unfortunately, not only the violent political rhetoric but also the media coverage of similar acts, as we are doing here. A variety of issues, especially mental health problems that lead to social isolation, lead the subject to a mental state that alters his or her ability to exercise cognitive control in a healthy manner. Again also childhood plays a big role. The cognitive control capacities of the subject get somewhat redirected—we don’t quite understand how—toward goals and activities that are violent in a very specific way. Not the violent outburst of somebody who has “lost it” in a bar, punching people right and left. The violence is channeled in a very specific plan, with a very specific target—generally fed by the media (like take the protesting that has gone on from Missouri to New York for a month or more with media showing every news flash each day)through some sort of rhetoric, political or otherwise—with very specific tools, in the Giffords case, a 9-millimeter Glock.

Now lets look at what are the signs of a person who is disturbed enough to take some form of action to killing.   The signs are quite visible, although difficult to interpret without a context—and unfortunately they unfold very quickly , and people can rarely witness them before the action is taken (which happened with Brinsley in New York killing officers in Brooklyn on duty just doing their job), . The action itself is a sign, a desperate form of communication from a disturbed individual (Brinsley did put on the internet a warning the day it was going to be done, Sat 12/20/14. Unfortunately, nobody was chatting with the guy when he left his final messages on Internet before getting into action. But I bet that if somebody was communicating with him before the act and saw those signs and read those messages on social network he was using, that person could have done something, could have engaged him in a sort of conversation that might have redirected his deranged plans. Indeed, by connecting with the subject, that person might have redirected some of the activity of mirror neurons toward a truly empathic behavior, rather than in the service of the deranged imitative violence leading to action.

My readers I tell you this information not to persecute a person dead not even a race or politicians but this LEARN HOW THE BRAIN WORKS.   Most importantly to PARENTS bring your children up AS A CHILD not as an adult until they reach adulthood with giving good direction and guidance as their primary mentor. You the parents make our next generation who are now children and even for future parents learn so they will have a more productive working society. For now the society in America works as a  nonproductive unit of people to all races, creeds, genders, sex preferences, & nationalities of all kinds. Especially in being compared to the 1980’s; yes they had their problems but not like today’s with people treating each other with more respect even if things didn’t go their way. Our nation went off the deep end in allowing us to have freedom of everything without limitations or better rules/regulations legally in place not followed which we are paying a good price for and will take a very long time to fix. Remember when someone or now a group of people get hurt you can forgive but healing is like a wound it takes time to heal. Example: Look at Hitler, people still haven’t forgiven him, those that did have not forgotten it and they shouldn’t. Protesting can be effective where its peaceful, quiet, and not bothering other people in the area who aren’t involved. Look at Missouri and New York City this past month, MUCH DAMAGE due to not thinking first but acting out first.