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?

With a cold, even a bad one I can eat, drink and function.

When I had flu I was bed bound for a week and lost 9lb. Couldn't manage more than a sip of water for about 4 days and everything hurt and sips of water made me feel nauseous. As well as being delirious and unable to get to the loo unaided for three days. DH actually called out the Dr.
DS was under two and we had to hire a locum nanny for a week. Had I been a single parent he would probably have needed temporary foster care if there had been no family.

@ShowOfHands

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.

This is true too. It's possible to have the flu & have relatively mild symptoms. Or like your DH have the classic debilitating flu symptoms.

But if someone has a bad cold, even where they're pretty sick & miserable, then they have a bad cold. And not flu.

Oh - I had swine flu in 2009. It was awful, incredibly sudden onset, hallucinating, fever etc. But just for 2 days. Day 3 I was wrecked but basically fine & was able to work. Really strange.

For me it was a temperature of 40 and being unable to stand up.

I remember having flu and not even having the energy to roll over to a less sweaty patch of the bed. My muscles hurt and I was so weak. I had a cough a fever and a sore throat.

I get colds a few times a year. I have a sore throat, maybe a cough and sore chest. My nose runs and is sore but apart from feeling very sorry for myself, I am ok and can get around. I can also eat food whereas with flu I don’t have the energy to sit up to attempt to eat what someone has cooked me let alone be well enough to shop for something I want.

Speed of onset. With a cold you get a gradual onset, the paced development of symptoms. An itchy throat, a bit of lethargy, something's not quite right, tickly cough, blocked ears, sinuses then, boom, no doubt, you are ill! With flu you are well, just walked a lovely 6 mile jaunt with the dogs, happy as Larry and then literally within hours you cannot get about because the symptoms are all present in full on mode. Speed of onset. People talk about flu being worse, but this is subjective, the only thing you can measure is speed of onset. Flu CAN be brief, but it does knock you for 6.

I would say that if you don’t know the difference then you’ve never had flu. You’ve had a cold and maybe a fevery virus but flu is unmistakable and most people don’t get it many times. I’ve had it twice in four decades.

I have had 'flu twice - the first was H1N1 which involved two days on the bathroom floor drifting in and out of consciousness. The second was this year - based on my mother's dictum, repeated on this thread, about the fifty pound note, I assumed it was some vague virus.

After three weeks of a 41 degree temperature, cough and sore throat, working full days but feeling like death, I went to the doctor. It swabbed as flu.

Like PP said, it's mostly the sudden onset (mine came on in a few hours, not that awful slow roll in where you know that you're getting a cold and there's you can do to stop it...) and the fact that you get worse days by day for days on end, rather than two or three days of utter misery and then starting to perk up. I didn't have much in the way of cold symptoms either time - bit of a runnier nose than normal, but not the horrific streaming snot and catarrh fest that's a normal cold.

When you have the flu you know it's the flu. Totally different (worse) than a cold. I've had it once and it was horrible. I've heard the £50 test too and I would not have moved for it.

You know its the 'flu when you are absolutely flat out in bed with the hot sweats and cold shivers for a week, half delirious and too ill to feel like eating anything.

I started a new job three weeks before Christmas, after one week we went to a party on the Sunday night felt fine, the next morning my alarm went for work and I was unable to lift my head off the pillow! I had to call in sick after one week of the new job. I couldn't get out of bed for a week, I was delirious. I went back to work after 10 days. I have the flu jab every year now.

For me it was the sudden onset, just came on. Was terribly ill and ended up in hospital with pneumonia, but the sudden onset was the stand out difference

You can't always tell fully, uses you are vigilant about symptoms. They are both viruses, and can both affect you in different ways. It is possible to get both to different extents.

Its not true that with flu you are always dreadfully ill and can't get out of bed.

People have been known to have flu without being aware of it - its only been discovered when they've had swabs. This was certainly the case after the two big flu scares in recent years.

www.nhs.uk/news/medical-practice/three-quarters-of-people-with-flu-have-no-symptoms/

You would know about it if you had flu. If you don’t know what flu is, you haven’t had it

The biggest difference is the way it starts - flu is usually sudden onset, a cold is more gradual.

You'll definitely know if you have flu! I got it once and I really could barely get out of bed for days, and remember the muscle pains and being drenched with sweat. I remember hearing the postman putting something through the letterbox and I was on my own and, and I ventured down the stairs to see what it was and I thought I was going to collapse.

For me it's when everything hurts and I can't stand the duvet touching my skin or legs because it's painful
Unfortunately my medication gives me flu symptoms once a week which is joyful so I get a headache, bone pain, fever, sweats...

I’ve only ever had it once and I couldn’t get out of bed for 4 days. I couldn’t lift my head off the bed to take painkillers - my housemate at the time had to slide them in my mouth. I couldn’t shower and barely made it to the toilet more than twice a day as I had to either crawl there or be carried there.

I have the flu jab religiously now. I couldn’t face that again.

My dd has something with flu like symptoms at the moment but it's not flu because she has phases of being quite perky between flu like phases. If it were flu she'd have the symptoms all the time.

The difference between cold and flu is easy enough. They difference between flu and 'flu like virus' is far harder as ime they have all they same symptoms and same sudden onset, usually just not so severe but as OP's have stated the severity of flu varies massively too

Flu is fucking horrific, basically. I have never been as ill as when I had flu. Bad cold, feel shitty but you can crack on. You can't with flu.

My doctor diagnosed flu by my temperature, I just thought I had a bad cold. I’d also driven to the doctors and could manage a few little shopping errands, so it’s not true that it’s completely incapacitating.
Agree on sudden onset of it though.

Agree with @Gonetoget, I though flu was always debilitating until a doctor diagnosed me when I took my DS to see him with fever and vomiting. I felt pretty awful but I could carry on and thought it was just a bad cold, symptoms suggested otherwise.

Also I have to add that since having the flu shot I've had far less "bad colds" than in years past.

You need to do PCR to know for sure. They are both RNA viruses, with similar symptoms, generally flu is more rapid onset and more severe symptoms but not in everyone.

From American sites the infection rate is 5-20% of adults, it's higher in children (~20% of Americans have the vaccine each year, not sure how that compares with our targetted vaccination programme here). But then there are other sites that say people get flu on average twice a decade and children get it more. Despite having a son who is in an 'at risk' group no-one in my family has ever had the 'so poorly you are wiped out for over a week' symptoms so either some people are getting far more than their fair share or DH, the kids, and I have had flu and not been that poorly.

I hope those of you who have had it get yourselves vaccinated, the more people who do the fewer peoole will get ill.

I have just recovered from flu, I caught it around Halloween. It’s honestly taken six weeks.

I spent four days crawling to the toilet and only able to eat a little soup, I then spent two weeks so weak it was ridiculous. I felt like crying but couldn’t manage it and I couldn’t even watch tv for two days as even my eyelids were in pain. It’s the third time I have had flu, once when DS was a toddler and also around four years ago. Always around Christmas time.