Doctor tell me; How easy is it to catch a cold?

Doctor tell me how easy is it to catch a cold. Because answering questions about your health is an important part of your doctor's services. The Minnesota State Medical Association presents doctor tell me here to ask the doctor your questions. Is Janice Hughes dead. Today your health questions will be answered by Dr. Robert W. RIF a family physician from White Bear like Dr. rife. Is it as hard is it as easy as we sometimes hear to catch a cold. Well I think this gets into the whole realm of immunity and the individual's ability or the individual's system's ability to fight off infection. Without trying to get too complicated I just I would like to refer to the fact that I am as you are exposed to some type of an infection and as you develop some of the symptoms of it your body reacts by producing some

antibodies against this. So that I as an adult. Most of us have resistance or so-called antibodies against many diseases including colds It's just that perhaps our immunity against colds are not the immunity doesn't last as long as it will to some of the other infections. But generally speaking if an individual is in normal good health he usually carries antibodies against many of these illnesses so that perhaps he'd be exposed to. Many common calls and wouldn't develop them. What is the role of close contact in cold infection. Well every year with the opening of school and the advent of colder weather and people being more closely confined we see an upswing of upper respiratory infections in our practice. This merely reflects the fact that one of the ways of spreading colds or operant respiratory infections that

is by oral spray or vocal spray I suppose you'd say this is much easier to find its way in. During the time of confinement so that in colder weather and with the coming on of winter and so forth people being closed up in you know rooms and you know houses that colds and rushed between factions spread much more easily this way which would be more infectious than a new cold or an old school. Generally speaking with respiratory infections in many of our contagious diseases that is childhood diseases the individual is most contagious just before he comes down with the disease and infection or during the early stages of it. So it's the fresh cold that's most contagious would it be true that a children's coat is any more contagious than an adult's cold. Blakely not. I think they're both due to the same type of

infection and it is the same type of microbe or virus whichever it is. And it's just a matter of the individual who is catching it or who is going to develop the infection as a matter of his resistance against this specific drug germ or microbe. Can a person. Harbor cold virus and infect others without actually having the code himself. You're speaking of the carrier. Yes this can happen with any kind of a disease although it happens perhaps less and more frequently with a cold than with some of our bacterial diseases. Thank you very much Dr. rife. The Minnesota State Medical Association has presented Dr. tell me recorded in the studios of KUNM at the University of Minnesota. Janice who is dead has asked the doctor your questions if you have any additional questions. Write to Dr. tell me. Minnesota State Medical Association Three seventy

five Jackson St.. St. Paul Minnesota 5 5 1 0 1. This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.