Do you get the flu shot?
I don't get one every year, but my doctor convinced me this year when I was in to see him for something else.
I have contracted Type A Influenza twice in my life with one time being the H1N1 variant. The first time was around 1998 and more recently in 2012. I can see why vulnerable people can die from it. The extremely high fever and the weakness is shocking. During my times suffering from it I literally couldn't lift a soup spoon to my mouth, lift blankets off my body or get up to go to the bathroom. At its worst I had my wife help me turn on my side in bed and I urinated into large empty gatorade bottle.
It's nothing to mess around with. The test for it is quick, but I also found it to be extremely uncomfortable because the long swab they use to swab far up into your nasal cavity feels like they're in your sinus cavity or like it's poking your brain.
ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,608
Location: Long Island, New York
Got it last week.
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Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
is it as bad as getting an upper endoscopy done, sans anaesthesia for acid reflux?
that minute was hell on earth
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הייתי צוללת עכשיו למים
הכי, הכי עמוקים
לא לשמוע כלום
לא לדעת כלום
וזה הכל אהובי, זה הכל.
is it as bad as getting an upper endoscopy done, sans anaesthesia for acid reflux?
that minute was hell on earth
I can't say since I haven't had that done.
lostonearth35
Veteran
Joined: 5 Jan 2010
Age: 50
Gender: Female
Posts: 11,962
Location: Lost on Earth, waddya think?
I hadn't really though about this until I just read an article that my daughter sent me this morning.
Harvard Medical School graduate and lecturer, Stephanie Taylor, is something of an Indiana Jones of medicine. “Anything that seems scary, I say I need to learn more about that,” she explained in a recent interview. While practicing pediatric oncology at a major teaching hospital, Taylor wondered why so many of her young patients came down with infections and the flu, despite the hospital’s herculean efforts at prevention. Her hunch: the design and infrastructure of the building contributed somehow.
She and colleagues studied 370 patients in one unit of a hospital to try to isolate the factors associated with patient infections. They tested and retested 8 million data points controlling for every variable they could think of to explain the likelihood of infection. Was it hand hygiene, fragility of the patients, or room cleaning procedures? Taylor thought it might have something to do with the number of visitors to the patient’s room.
While all those factors had modest influence, one factor stood out above them all, and it shocked the research team. The one factor most associated with infection was (drum roll): dry air. At low relative humidity, indoor air was strongly associated with higher infection rates. “When we dry the air out, droplets and skin flakes carrying viruses and bacteria are launched into the air, traveling far and over long periods of time. The microbes that survive this launching tend to be the ones that cause healthcare-associated infections,” said Taylor. “Even worse, in addition to this increased exposure to infectious particles, the dry air also harms our natural immune barriers which protect us from infections."
Since that study was published, there is now more research in peer-reviewed literature observing a link between dry air and viral infections, such as the flu, colds and measles, as well as many bacterial infections, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is funding more research. Taylor finds one of the most interesting studies from a team at the Mayo Clinic, which humidified half of the classrooms in a preschool and left the other half alone over three months during the winter. Influenza-related absenteeism in the humidified classrooms was two-thirds lower than in the standard classrooms—a dramatic difference. Taylor says this study is important because its design included a control group: the half of classrooms without humidity-related intervention.
According to her research, and subsequent studies in the medical literature, the “sweet spot” for indoor air is between 40% and 60% relative humidity. An instrument called a hygrometer, available for about $10, will measure it. Every hospital, school, and home should have them, according to Taylor, along with a humidifier to adjust room hydration to the sweet spot.
Source: This Inexpensive Action Lowers Hospital Infections And Protects Against Flu Season
That sounds like complete and total hogwash.
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