What are the Swine Flu Symptoms
What are the swine flu symptoms?
If you are asking yourself this question, you are certainly not alone. In fact, more than ever, people are running to see their doctor at the first sign of a runny nose or fever which is leaving medical professionals quite overwhelmed. With such a scare over the H1N1 virus, it is important to educate yourself on symptoms to watch for and to know when to make a doctor’s appointment and when to simply stay in bed.
What’s the Confusion About?
It is really quite difficult to answer the, “What are the swine flu symptoms?” question because the virus doesn’t offer its own precise menu of symptoms. In fact, the symptoms are so similar to the traditional flu virus that many people are leaving their illness untreated until it progresses into something more serious.
Nearly everyone who has had the swine flu experiences a high fever of around 102 to 103 degrees Fahrenheit or even a degree higher in children. Other common symptoms include fatigue, headache, cough and nasal secretions which are also present in the influenza virus. Some individuals also experience nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, especially children. This is where the swine flu starts getting incredibly dangerous because vomiting and diarrhea can quickly lead to dehydration in individuals who aren’t able to supply themselves with enough liquids to make up for what they are losing.
Why Prompt Treatment is Important
If you are asking, “What are the swine flu symptoms?” you should also be wondering why they are so dangerous. This is a deadly illness that will often lead to pneumonia, seizures and death. Of course, not everyone who becomes infected with the virus will see severe effects.
Should the virus remain in your upper respiratory system, you are likely to be fine. However, if it travels to your lungs, your odds of dying are increased by as much as eight percent or more. Once acute respiratory distress syndrome occurs, chance of death is nearly 50 percent. This is because the flu burrows itself deep in your lungs, destroying the alveoli which will often cause your lungs to fail.
Deceased individuals who have experienced this frequently have lungs that appear highly blistered and fluid build up or excessive bleeding in the lungs is suggested to be the cause of death. In fact, it is common for affected individuals to cough up blood due to the cellular damage that is caused by immune response.
Another cause of death is multi-system organ failure. This can occur due to insufficient oxygen levels in the individual’s blood or because of some type of secondary bacterial infection. Therefore, the swine flu isn’t even listed as the primary cause of death in all cases because it essentially paves a nice path for secondary infections, some of the most common ones are bacterial pneumonia, staph infection and strep throat.
Prevention
The swine flu vaccine is highly recommended to not only protect yourself but also to reduce the risk of you spreading the virus to others around you. If you start showing any kind of symptoms, stay away from other people! The reason these viruses are so dangerous is because they are spread so easily. There are also a few other things you can do to protect yourself from this violent virus:
- Wash your hands frequently and thoroughly. If you have small children in your home, they should be instructed to do so as well, until they fall into the habit of doing it themselves.
- Use an alcohol-based sanitizer on your hands when soap and water are not available, especially in public after you touch anything that someone else could have infected.
- Keep your hands away from your mouth, eyes and nose. The virus gets into your system through these mucus membranes.
- The last thing you can do if you are worried about the virus and wondering, “What are the swine flu symptoms?” is to avoid crowded areas such as shopping centers, subways, etc.