These Common Infections Can Actually Help Your Child Stay Healthy

Infections are pretty common in all ages, but kids are the ones that are frequently infected. Since their immune system is underdeveloped, they get easily infected by disease-causing germs and pathogens.

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Nevertheless, even though their immune system is developing, these common infections can actually boost their immunity.

  • Cold And Flu

Cold, which is pretty common in kids, is a viral infection. The virus that causes Cold, Rhinovirus, can travel up to 12 feet from the infected person when ejected. Highly contagious, adults can get infected up to two times in a year, whereas the kids can get infected up to eight times a year.

Having said that, there is a bleak difference between cold and flu. While cold is just limited to the respiratory tract, flu can influence the entire immune system. You should consult a doctor for a better iteration of the disease. While cold might not cause fever (or even if it does, the fever is mild), flu, on the other hand, leads to high fever.

While it may sound strange, but cold and flu in fact help in boosting the immunity in kids. The white blood cells develop resistance against the pathogens that cause cold and flu. That is the reason over the course of life, people get cold and flu more seldom.

  • Food Poisoning

While food poisoning is caused by consumption of contaminated food and water, the pathogens that contaminate these sources are innumerable. Most of these pathogens are bacteria and virus. The exact pathogen responsible for a certain type of food poisoning can be determined by laboratory analysis. Food poisoning can cause diarrhea and vomiting along with dehydration, fever, nausea, and stomach aches.

You may argue about how diarrhea and vomiting can help improve your child’s health? While these pathogens release toxins in the body, the body’s immune system responds to these pathogens. Which results in diarrhea and vomiting. And in turn, the body develops immunity against the specific pathogens.

Not just developing the immune system, food poisoning also helps with the removal of toxins from the bowel. As you may know, toxins are produced by the body regularly during the process of digestion. Often traces of these toxins are left stranded in the body.

Although there is a vaccine to induce immunity against cold and flu, that is not the case with food poisoning. Since there are many germs that can cause food poisoning, there is no specific vaccine that can immunize against all of them.

  • Chickenpox

Almost every human suffers from chickenpox once in their lives. Usually, the disease-causing virus infects the kids below 12 years of age. But once the virus enters the human body, it can never be removed and stays within the body, as long as the person lives.

Your kid can easily get infected with the Varicella-Zoster-Virus, which causes chickenpox. This disease is highly contagious, and can easily be transmitted from the infected person to a healthy person. But, in case you or your kid has already been infected once, you don’t need to worry as it does not recur.

The symptoms begin with rashes and bumps showing up around the belly, neck, back, or face and then spreads to each and every part of the body. Before the bumps even start showing up, your child may suffer a high fever between 101⁰F -102⁰F.

There are three stages to chicken pox. As already said, it begins with the appearance of red bumps, which gradually turn into blisters filled with liquid. These blisters dry off in a couple of days and forms scrabs. The process goes on simultaneously. Chickenpox can last up to 2 weeks.

Once the disease turns away, the virus does not cause chickenpox ever again. Having said that, there is still a threat from this zoster virus. They can cause shingles in adults.

Coming back to the topic, chickenpox actually, helps develop immunity against a number of other viruses, including the viruses that cause common cold and flu. Apart from this, once suffered from chickenpox, a person can rarely get infected by shingles. The reason for this resistance is the developed immune system that keeps the Varicella-Zoster-Virus at bay.

There is a relative to the chickenpox virus that has already been wiped out from the world. The virus that causes smallpox. The variola virus is the first and the only infectious virus that has been cleared off from the face of the earth completely.

While most of the infections are harmful, but if your child is suffering from any of these diseases, then you can at least worry a little less. After all, these diseases are in fact helping your child stay healthier and immune against these diseases and many others in the long run.