How can you really tell if it’s a cold or the flu?

[Greenbutterlfy566]

How can you really tell if it’s a cold or the flu?

What is the major difference between them?

Flu you feel like death, cant get out of bed and it takes a long time to recover.

Cold you just feel like shit but can still function.

There is a very big difference. The flu is not 'just a bad cold'

I was always told that 'if there was a £50 note on your window sill you wouldn't have the energy to go and collect it' but yes a cold is a cold but a flu is bed bound (or close to bed bound depending on you)

Well for me I can function with a cold, with flu I couldn't even get out of bed, I did have pneumonia as well though and genuinely felt close to death, could only take very shallow breaths. I guess you can get mild or severe versions of both though but flu is usually accompanied with pain all over the body (I've had it twice).

It’s not always the case that flu makes you feel like death though. Our whole family had it, diagnosed from the hospital as me and one of the kids were very very poorly. My husband and our youngest were ill, with temps etc but nowhere near like how bad me and the middle child were.
I would have dismissed it as just a bad cold or a small virus if we hadn’t known for certain that it was definitely flu.

Flu is just awful. You can’t get out of bed because you feel so ill: Sick, dizzy, no eating - (towards the end all i could think of was oranges after not eating for days) - its one of my bugbears when people call the common cold ‘flu’ - colds can be nasty but flu, thats a different ball game entirely.

You KNOW when it’s flu. If you’re wondering, it’s a bad cold.

Fevers are a huge indicator. With a cold you'll feel shivery and slightly feverish. With flu you'll have a high temperature which will need paracetamol to bring down. I remember having the swine flu about 14 years ago and have never experienced fevers like it. I was hallucinating and had to literally crawl across the floor to get to the loo!

If you have a cold you'll pick up a dropped £10 note. If you've got 'flu you can't be arsed.

I've had 'flu, boiling hot but teeth chattering like you're freezing, hallucinations, thinking I was dying, having to drag yourself to the toilet.

Cold - runny nose, headache, feeling sorry for yourself. Able to function.

With a cold one can manage to struggle into work or 'soldier on' but when I had flu I could only just get out of bed to visit the bathroom when necessary. Even that took

a huge effort. Also the £50 note test referred to by PP.

Testing is the only way really.

Severity of flu symptoms can vary quite a lot. Mostly it’ll be the feeling like death and not getting out of bed, but it can vary from anything from almost asymptomatic to being hospitalised.

When you've had flu you can understand how people die from it because when it was at it's worse, you wanted to die from it too. It's truly debilitating fro most people.

I blame too many adverts for 'cold and flu' remedies. It really isn't the same.

I think flu doesn't necessarily have the symptoms of a cold.

I had flu recently and I hurt all over, and slept all day and all night for days. (Waking here and there, but probably slept 20 hours out of 24) I only got a sore throat and stuffy nose once I was over the worst of it.

It's bs you know if it's flu. I had flu as a child and was ill but could get out of bed (mum had flu at same time and was hospitalised)

At the end of the day it doesn't really matter what the official diagnosis is. If you are too ill to get out of bed you are too ill regardless if it's flu or a bad cold. You should go off how you are feeling not whether it's a cold Or flu

With the flu it was debilitating for me whereas a bad cold or virus will have me in bed but I can go and make food if needed. With flu I was delirious, couldn't get out of bed (could only go to the loo with assistance). Although there are different strains of influenza so maybe some are worse than others?

Oh, the other thing is the suddenness.

With a cold, it builds up over a few days. With flu I was out and about in the morning, came home, had a bit of a headache so went to lie down, by the time I walked to my bed and took off my shoes I felt like I was dying.

I had a bad cold a couple of years back that didn’t clear. Eventually went to doctors, tests showed flu. I had been at work with it for at least a week and unfortunately did spread it.

If I had realised it was flu I would have stayed at home.

I had the flu once, and I actually thought I might die from it. Couldn't get out of bed. Could barely breathe. Definitely couldn't eat or watch TV or anything like that.

I think the main symptoms are generally different too. Temperatures with the flu which you don’t get with a cold. I also didn’t have a runny nose or sneezing which are cold symptoms.
I had a horrible cough though, with no mucus. Ended up with pneumonia.
Was in bed for 2 weeks and ended up in hospital on tamiflu and antibiotics.

@Inniu what were your symptoms? Hospital said to me that you can have the common cold and flu at the same time

DH and I had swabbed, diagnosed swine flu. He was bed ridden and delirious, sweating so much he looked like he'd been caught in torrential rain, feverish, in agony. I felt off colour but not as ill as with a bad cold. Got on with life as normal. There are no absolutes.

I suffer badly with colds - sore skin, aching muscles, fever, etc but the flu was a different level.

It started with me feeling very nauseous and I couldn’t eat. The next morning I couldn’t get out of bed. My temp was 41, I had absolutely no appetite, everything hurt from my head to my toes. I was struggling to keep fluids up because it hurt to sip water. I couldn’t keep my eyes open for longer than 10 minutes. Had absolutely no interest in leaving my bed. Told my mum I thought I was dying and wanted to be in hospital. This lasted 4 days. I then had a bath (easier than a shower because I couldn’t stand up) and DH came home to find me in a cool bath because I didn’t have the energy to get back out the bath. Made it to a friends house on New Year’s Day (oh yes, this all happened over Christmas), managed to eat some food and slept on her sofa whilst the lunch happened around me. That left me exhausted and back in bed for 3 days. Ended up going to work for an hour before being sent home. Stayed off work for a further week. Took about a month to get my energy levels back to where they had been.

I'm on day 17 . For the first 5 days I didn't even think to wash !
Spent most of the day in bed, if I did get up just say on the sofa . No appetite , still haven't got my taste buds back , drinking tea is like having hot water . I'd definitely say I've had flu and not a cold.

I wonder if DS5 had flu recently. He was off school for a week. Tonsils were large and red (no pus though) lymph glands like golf balls, temp over 40 (had a febrile seizure), vomiting hard, slept for 36 hours straight, didn't eat for 4 days. Bloody scary.

The suddenness is the big one, I agree.

I've had flu 3 times in my life (I'm 43) and it has been absolutely awful. I remember coming down with flu when at university - I felt a bit tired walking into a morning tutorial. By the end of the tutorial 50 minutes later, I thought I was going to collapse & barely made it back home.

The worst was 3 years ago when me plus some of my kids came down with it. It was at Christmas & I'd no help. Single parent, useless ex. It was horrific. Trying to mind them, somehow feed them, I literally was crawling to get food on / kids to bed. Shuddering thinking of it.

Of course you can be really sick & miserable with a cold. But you can manage, and feel some way human.

I had flu in about 1998-it was horrible. I was in bed for days, sweating, delirious and get like I was just drifting in and out of consciousness (was presumably dozing) but I remember it being so painful even to hobble to the toilet!