COUGH AND COLD A cold is a viral infection characterized by inflammation of the mucous membranes lining the upper respiratory

passages and usually accompanied by malaise, fever, chills, coughing, and sneezing. Also called coryza, acute rhinitis, common cold, coryza. A cough is a forceful release of air from the lungs that can be heard. Coughing protects the respiratory system by clearing it of irritants and secretions. Since most of the people are indoors during the rainy season, the probability of spreading these conditions is higher. The air inside a house or a hall packed with people staying out of the rain does not circulate well, especially with the windows and doors closed all the time to prevent water from coming in. This makes the bacteria or virus easily transmittable. And with more people inside, exposure to these elements is far greater. The average child will get between three and eight colds every year and most will get better within a few days without medication.

Why do we cough?
Coughs are your body's way of clearing dust and other obnoxious (in the strictest sense) things out of your windpipe and lungs. When your body senses that there is something in your airway that shouldn't be there, you automatically take a deep breath, close your windpipe at the "glottis" (the top of the windpipe at the back of your throat) momentarily, push air against the closed glottis with your lung muscles to build up extra pressure, and then open your glottis. When the glottis opens, the high-pressure air comes out explosively, and the explosion helps force the extraneous matter out of your airways. You can also cough whenever you want to, whether to clear your throat or for other reasons. Although you can almost always cough when you want to, the "automatic" cough reflex is an important defense against smoke, mis-swallowed food, nasal mucus, and other things that might accidentally enter your airway. Without the cough reflex you are much more likely to develop infections or allow chemical irritation to damage your airways and lung tissue. Why do our noses run? Our cough reflex is not the only way we have to protect our airways. Most of the time we breathe through our noses. There are several folds and ridges at the back of the nose, on the way to the throat and windpipe, which are covered with mucous membranes. These membranes secrete mucus, a thin but slightly sticky liquid. As the air we breathe passes over these folds and ridges, it is humidified by evaporating water from the membranes and mucus, and many of the dust particles present in the inhaled air stick to the mucus so they cannot continue to the lungs. (Mucous membranes also line the

windpipe and airways and help to trap smaller dust particles, and there are microscopic hairs, known as "cilia", on the surface of the lung's mucous membranes that continuously "sweep" the dirty mucus up through the airways and toward the windpipe where you can cough it all the way out.) Sometimes, when our noses and lungs are irritated by something in the air, our mucous membranes will produce more mucus to help pick up and clean out the irritants. This can also happen when we breathe in something that we are allergic to, like ragweed pollen (the cause of "hay fever": the allergic reaction of the mucus membranes to the offending material makes the membranes produce a lot more mucus, and a lot of extra water enters that mucus because of the allergic effect on the membranes. Unfortunately, the excess mucus and water makes you very uncomfortable and doesn't do any better as far as self-cleaning goes. Viruses can also attack the mucus membranes and cause extra watering and extra mucus production. This, in fact, is how the common cold occurs. The virus is spread from person to person through droplets in the air or on hands: remember that there's a lot of extra liquid around with all the irritation, and a lot of that is sprayed into the air every time you cough or sneeze. Other people who breathe those droplets may be infected also, since the droplets will be caught on their mucus membranes. Once you've been infected by a particular cold virus you'll be immune to it forever, but there are hundreds of cold viruses around for you to catch, and there'll almost always be a few around that you haven't had yet. Since, as with the vast majority of viruses, there are no medicines we can use to kill cold viruses, when we get a cold we have to wait it out, possibly with medicines to relieve some of the misery. CAUSE Colds or common colds cause coughs. Most coughs and colds are caused by viruses. Many different viruses can infect the nose and throat. They are passed on by coughing and sneezing the virus into the air. Sometimes several coughs or colds occur one after the other. More than 200 different types of viruses are known to cause the common cold, with rhinovirus causing approximately 30%-35% of all adult colds. Other commonly implicated viruses include coronavirus, adenovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, and parainfluenza virus. Because so many different viruses can cause a cold and because new cold viruses constantly develop, the body never builds up resistance against all of them. For this reason, colds are a frequent and recurring problem. In fact, children in preschool and elementary school can have six to 12 colds per year while adolescents and adults typically have two to four colds per year. The common cold occurs most frequently during the fall and winter months.A child who lives with smokers has an increased risk of developing coughs and colds.