Yeah, nobody likes the flu. The flu, or influenza, is a
very contagious virus. It usually rears its ugly head
in the winter and early spring (apparently, influence
viruses vacation during the summer).
A virus is actually a living organism with a very
important difference from us - it must live within a
living cell. They burrow themselves in our bodies in an
attempt to find a living cell where it can set up camp.
Your body doesn’t want them there because, well, they
actually kill the cell that they are living in. Once
it’s made itself comfortable and knowing that the cell
it has moved into is going to die, it attempts to
replicate and spread.
The flu virus attacks your body through the respiratory
tract. You catch it when you breathe in droplets of air
that contain the virus. Where do those infected
droplets of air come from? They float around after an
infected person sneezes or coughs (hence, the reason you
should cover your mouth when you sneeze). The flu virus
infects the mucous membranes in our noses in order to
irritate them and make them produce more mucous (snot)
because well, they know you’re going to sneeze that snot
out and help them spread to another host. Pretty
clever, eh?
Colds and flu are very similar but the flu is actually a
bit worse. Both cause headaches, sneezing, and runny
noses but the flu usually causes fever and weakness
too. There are more than 100 different variants of the
cold virus and new variations of the flu virus evolve
every few years. Antibiotics, which only treat
bacterial infections, don’t work on viruses and neither
do pig oinkments. You pretty much just have to let it
run its course.
The 2009 swine flu virus goes by the scientific name
H1N1. The swine flu virus really does come from pigs
who can catch the flu just like people. It usually
doesn’t jump from a pig to a person so don’t even bother
trying to train your pig to cover its mouth when it
coughs. But in rare cases it does jump to a person and
when it does, it usually spreads from person to person
much easier than it would spread from a pig to a person.
So what happens once you catch the flu? Once you are
infected with the flu virus, your body’s white blood
cells start producing antibodies to combat the foreign
invaders. It’s just like a little war going on in your
body. The antibodies are proteins that attach
themselves to the foreign invaders and wipe them out.
Scientists can capture these antibodies and use them to
make medicines that help other people fight off the flu.
So why does your body get sore when you catch the flu?
In addition to releasing antibodies, histamines are also
released which constrict your blood vessels and tweak
your nerves a bit. This nerve tweaking causes the
muscles to contract which itself produces lactic acid
which, and as evidence by “acid” in its name, it makes
you a bit sore.
If you’re scared of something like the swine flu, don’t
be. We’re not telling you to totally ignore the thing
but don’t get all freaked out about it either. It
varies in severity and in some cases, is even milder
than the regular flu. And in both cases, your body just
has to do its thing and fight off the viral invader.
