Common Cold
You know what a common cold feels like—the runny nose, the congestion, the sneezing, the coughing, and sore throat—but do you know what it actually is? The common cold is an infection of the upper respiratory system. Turbinates, or shelf like formations in your nose, help trap or filter out incoming particles, so they don’t reach the back of your throat and create irritation. You catch a common cold when the virus manages to make it past the turbinates, entering the back of your throat and settling in a lymph gland called the adenoid, only to attach itself there.
1 billion common colds occur in the U.S. in any given year. Adults generally experience 2 – 4 colds a year. In general, women typically get colds more frequently then men. Women ages 20 – 30 are particularly susceptible to the common cold because they tend to spend more time around children, who are notorious for spreading colds. Children pass colds around easily because they don’t generally wash their hands as often as adults do, and because they attend school in a communal setting. School children are in close quarters with other kids, with whom they share classroom supplies, so germs are easily passed from one student to the next, even in the most hygiene conscientious of schools. Because of this, the average kid typically has as many as 6 – 10 colds a year. In families with multiple school-aged children, kids can sometimes even have 12 colds in a single year! With that said, it is no wonder that the common cold is the top cause of absences from both school and work. Annually, 22 million U.S. school days alone are missed with the common cold as the culprit. And, when kids stay home from school, parents have to miss work to stay home with them. Fortunately, the common cold isn’t usually responsible for long periods of absence, since symptoms are generally mild and last just a week or two.
Surprisingly, people aged 60 and older average only one cold a year. This may be because they are retired from the workplace, and are therefore more isolated from other cold carriers. People over 60 also rarely have school-aged children that come home with the cold that’s going around the classroom.
In the U.S., colds crop up most often during the fall and winter seasons, starting at the end of August and ending at the beginning of March. The timing for this peak in the incidence of the common cold may very well have to do with when school opens. Of course, it also has a lot to do with the cold weather, but there’s more to it than that. When the weather gets cold school children spend more time indoors (at recess, during gym class, etc.) in close proximity to each other, thereby increasing the likelihood of spreading cold viruses. Seasonal changes that affect relative humidity also contribute to the incidence of the common cold. That’s because cold viruses thrive in colder, low-humidity weather. What’s more, cold weather dehydrates the inner lining of the nose, making it more susceptible to infection.
There is no cure for the common cold, but there are a multitude of medications for alleviating the associated symptoms. In fact, there are even some drugs that claim to shorten a cold’s duration.