Common Cold With Gastrointestinal Distress
  It is important to understand that common cold with gastrointestinal distress is still and important symptom that can cause serious problems. Another three groups of viruses — all relatively large and rounded can bring on cold symptoms varying in severity. One group includes the microorganisms responsible for influenza, which in milder forms can be indistinguishable from a common cold, the very similar Para influenza viruses do not cause influenza but produce colds. In adults, Para influenza is generally mild, but can be more serious for children, causing respiratory diseases ranging from croup to an inflammation of the lungs called broncliolitis. In infants and young children, both infections are also caused by another related microorganism, the respiratory syncytial virus.
Scientists currently regard rhino viruses as agents of some 30 to 50 per cent of common colds in adults, perhaps somewhat fewer in children. Corona viruses, they believe, cause another 15 to 20 per cent, while viruses of the other families are blamed for another 10 per cent. This leaves 20 to 45 per cent of upper respiratory infections with specific causes that are still unknown. Virologists continue to look for viral villains in the hope that by learning to recognize them and their precise methods of infecting the respiratory tract they will also find clues as to how medicine might intervene.
The perfect parasite
The process by which viruses cause colds is intricate and all the more fascinating because so much of it is, essentially, invisible. A cold virus in isolation can be seen under an electron microscope, but once it begins its work in a host cell, it disappears from view. Soon after it attaches itself to the appropriate host, this perfect parasite penetrates the cell wall. The virus then loses its protective coating and reprograms the reproductive activities of the cell. Now, instead of continuing to sustain or propagate itself, the hapless host cell begins to produce more enemy viruses. A crowded virus factory, the cell may burst open, releasing up to a thousand new and identical viruses into the surrounding tissue, and these will repeat the infectious process again and again. The exhausted host cell, its internal structure a shambles, is left, usually to die.
People repeatedly suffer such viral insults, quite often with little more than a vague sense of malaise or with no sensation at all. In these cases, the body’s protective forces may have quietly and successfully marshaled to encircle the invaders before they can spread very far. Thwarted, the viruses infect fewer and fewer cells, and the “unapparent,” or subclinical, infection comes to a symptom-free end. Once however you are suffering from the common cold with gastrointestinal distress you need to see a physician.
If the body’s initial reaction to the invasion was inadequate, however, thousands of viruses soon multiply into millions, leaving in their wake a trail of broken cells. One to four days after the onslaught of the infection, the misery of a cold sets in.
Charles Lamb, the 19th Century essayist, summed up the result for every human plagued by this ubiquitous disease when he described his own suffering: “Do you know what it is to succumb to an insurmountable day mare a wholesome lethargy an indisposition to do anything, a total deadness and distaste, a suspension of vitality, an indifference to locality, a numb soporifically good for nothingness, an ossification all over, an oyster-like insensibility to the passing events, a mind stupor, a brawny defiance to the needles of a thrusting-in conscience? Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
Unfortunately for Lamb, no one in his time could suggest any effective means of deliverance. But, as reported in other articles on our website or our blog, there are today a number of constructive ways to stay healthy and avoid colds, not all colds certainly, but some. So please ensure that the common cold with gastrointestinal distress is not taken lightly. |
