A Cold or The Flu (Influenza)? 

First, we need to mention that the influenza and the common cold are both contagious viral infections of the respiratory tract, and they come from different viral families.  The flu viruses form a category of its own (the Orthomyxoviridae family), common cold can be caused by up to four hundred viruses.  Unfortunately, there is no absolute cure for any of them and checking and determining which virus is causing your cold, will not be advantageous in helping you recover any faster.

While the symptoms are very similar, influenza is more severe.  Sore throat, congestion, runny nose and sneezing are common with colds and both diseases bring coughing, headache and chest discomfort.  The symptoms of flu tend to cause one to have more symptoms of fever, aching of the body, and dry coughing than the common cold. 

Complications from colds usually present a much less serious threat to one's health, as the flu can lead to other problems such as pneumonia and sinus infections, while those with the cold rarely have to make a trip to the hospital. Colds primarily cause problems in the head alone, and many call them head colds as most of the symptoms exist purely from the neck-up. Influenza, on the other hand, affects the whole body and can be quite threatening to ones health, especially those who are very young or very old.

The viruses that cause the illnesses are very different, but they do result in many of the same symptoms.  For this reason, many people have trouble telling the two apart by symptoms alone.  For example, both cases of flu and common cold may very well start with afflictions of the upper respiratory system (mainly the nose and throat) such as constant sneezing, nasal congestion, sore and dry throat (or phlegmy throat in some cases) and coughing. In addition, both diseases can cause mild headaches, fevers, muscle soreness and a general state of weakness and nausea, although these symptoms are more severe in flu cases.

They spread in much the same way, with the affected individuals coughing or sneezing and releasing more of the virus particles into the air for others to fall victim to. However some studies have found that the beads of moisture in which the germs are expelled during coughing and sneezing, generally they fall to the ground unless immediately inhaled, discovering that a much higher number of infection causing microbes are present on the hands of people suffering from these illnesses than in the air into which they have been coughing or sneezing. 

Generally, colds are very contagious especially in young children.  As adults, our tendency to catch a cold decreases possibly due to some developed immunity.  Cold symptoms settle in between one and four days after the getting infected by the cold virus.  During he first three days we feel the symptoms, we are the most contagious. 

Usually, the flu virus symptoms will roughly manifest 24-48 hours after the virus has infected the body, whereas common cold viruses are triggered slower. This means that it’s a lot easier to prevent a case of common cold than one of flu, stopping the viruses from their roots before spreading and making the situation worse.

One thing that the two illnesses have in common is the fact that we do not yet have a cure for them. However, there are vaccines that are available that can make you immune to the new strains of the flu that come around from year to year. For that reason, the flu is much more preventable than the common cold. While instances of the common cold may appear at random, the flu tends to strike seasonally, with most becoming affected in the middle of winter.

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