Vaccination is the only active way to prevent and control influenza. It can prevent the flu in 70 per cent to 90 percent of young, healthy adults. You can still get the flu after having a flu vaccine but you will be far less sick than someone who has not received the vaccine. The vaccine reduces the severity of the symptoms and protects you from other viruses that sometimes feel like the flu.
Different types of flu vaccines have been available and used for more than 60 years. The difficult aspect of vaccine development is that the influenza viruses are constantly changing, so that the vaccines must also be changed annually to target the most recent circulating flu viruses. Scientists need about four months to develop a new vaccine that protects against a new virus.
There is no single vaccine that can be used to protect you from flu forever. While flu viruses can become resistant to antiviral drugs, they have not yet developed resistance to flu vaccines. Last winter in the USA, the influenza A (H3H2) virus was the predominant flu virus and it caused a more severe flu season.
Because the flu vaccine is only effective for one year and viruses vary from year to year, you should have a flu shot every year. Immunity does not develop immediately after your vaccination. The flu vaccine takes about 14 days to provide its greatest protection. Ask your doctor about getting vaccinated before the flu season arrives. Here in Australia, the vaccine is usually available from March each year.
If you’re not in one of the groups recommended to get the flu shot you still choose to be immunized. Your GP will write a prescription which will cost whatever the pharmacist charges. This year, US health authorities are recommending that all children aged six months to 18 years receive an annual influenza vaccination. These recommendations have nit yet been introduced in Australia. You can still ask your doctor for advice.
Our three kids already got the shots but we parents not yet so I guess by this month we can have it for prevention.

I’m weak, tired and grumpy. Not because of stress but I suspect I got the winter gastroenteritis. I sleep last night with a little tummy ache and the grumbling sounds of it. I just ignored the feeling but still it doesn’t give me a complete rest. My tummy so noisy and early in the morning that makes me wanna run to the toilet. I felt like vomiting and I really hate it. I have mentioned with my previous post about my son feeling the same vomiting . With the research I have found about winter illness called winter gastroenteritis, we got some of the symptoms but indifferently. My son keeps on vomiting but he doesn’t have diarrhea. In my case I just vomit the water I drink early in the morning but my gosh toilet keeps on calling me. I’m feeling weak and dehydrated already. I want to sleep but I’m bothered so I just sit here having confession while drinking warm water.
I’m still observing the symptoms because it’s still not confirmed. This maybe also because of the combination of food I eat yesterday. Vegetable salads with hot marshmallow chocolate for lunch, banana for snacks, and vegetables again for dinner, chocolate biscuits and milk an hour before sleep. You think that would be a possible cause? I’m still thinking with gastroenteritis that can be pass through the family members. Do you think my son had passed it to me? My tummy is still aching by this moment but tolerable as well as my bowel movement.
I didn’t even got the chance to go to church because of my illness. It’s the second Sunday already. Forgive me oh Lord. Last Sunday the weather is bad and now I’m feeling bad. Doh!
Oh my goodness. I can’t blog hop that much, I can’t drop entrecards that much and even can post that much. Ouch! My tummy…ayayay.. Bye for now because I need to go the toilet again.

I’m so bothered with winter sicknesses especially that we were just new to this certain kind of season. My oldest son is feeling bad today and he is vomiting early in the morning and doesn’t want to eat. I was just glad that he can still manage to go to school and reach home this afternoon fine but still looks grumpy.
I made a research about winter sicknesses and the first that I have read was about gastroenteritis which is some kinda related with the symptoms my son experiencing.
Gastroenteritis in young children and babies occurs more often from about April each year and is often called winter gastro. It is an illness caused by the infection and inflammation of the digestive system, mostly by viral or bacterial infections, but also by bacterial toxins, parasites, some chemicals and some drugs.
Here in Australia the most common causes of gastroenteritis are viruses, often the rotavirus, and the most common bacterial gastroenteritis is Campylobacter infection. Infection occurs when the virus or bacterium enters your gut, usually by eating or drinking.
Gastroenteritis is very easily spread – an infected person can pass the bacteria to other people, or surfaces, by not wasing their hands properly. Oh my God, I hope my son is doing the washing in school. I always told them to do it often.
Good hygiene, including thorough washing of hands, is essential to protect yourself and other family members.
Generally, gastroenteritis is over within a few days. Typical symptoms include tummy cramps, diarrhoea and vomiting.
It’s important to see your doctor, however, as vomiting and diarrhoea can also be caused by many other problems such as food poisoning, infections in other parts of the body (such as pneumonia or ear infections) and appendicitis.
If you have gastro, you need to drink plenty of fluids. Drinks that contain a lot of sugar – such as soft drinks, cordial, sports drinks and fruit juice – are not suitable as they can make you sicker. The best way to replace lost fluids is with oral rehydration fluids. These drinks are available at chemist and have the right amounts of sugar, salt and water to be easily absorbed in the gut.
A person suffering from severe gastroenteritis may need fluids administered intravenously. Don’t take antivomiting or antidiarrhoea drugs bought from the chemist unless your doctor has recommended it, because these medicines will keep the infection inside your body.

Flu starts when an influenza virus enters your body through your nose and mouth, although the virus does not start an infection in everybody who is exposed to it. To make you ill, a virus needs to get into your respiratory tract (the passages from your nose and mouth into your lungs).
The virus can be spread by coughs and sneezes spraying droplets on to surfaces, especially in crowded, enclosed spaces. These viruses can survive outside the body for some time, especially in cold and dry weather. If you touch droplets containing a virus for a respiratory disease, and then touch your face near your nose or mouth, the virus can enter and move down your respiratory tract. This is the most common way to catch the flu.
It usually takes between one and four days for you to develop flu symptoms after the influenza virus enters your body through your nose or throat. You are infectious from the day before you develops symptoms until seven days after symptoms start.

About three days after being exposed to the virus, the symptoms of the fly usually develop suddenly. Symptoms are similar to those caused by cold viruses, but they tend to be more severe and to last longer:
* Fever (temperature of 37-40 Degrees Celsius or higher)
* Aching in muscles and joins all over the body
* Headache
* General feeling of being very ill
* Dry cough
* Blocked or runny nose
* Lack of appetite
* Extreme tiredness
* Chills and sweating

Medical scientists are predicting that avian flu (bird flu H5H1) may be be next year major pandemic to occur on our planet. This flu is a very infectious disease of birds caused by the Influenza A virus.
All birds are susceptible to the flu but wild ducks, domestic chickens and turkeys are particularly at risk to a very fatal type of the virus. Control of the outbreak means quarantining infected farms and the destruction of domestic poultry flocks, resulting in a great economic loss to farmers and governments.
The major concern for world health authorities is that the bird flu will mix with a human flu virus and mutate rapidly, forming a new viral strain deadly to humans by human-to-human contact.
Population will not have immunity to the new virus and will be susceptible to severe illness and death before a vaccine can be developed to protect them.
They have been recent alarms of bird flu being transmitted directly to humans in Indonesia, Vietnam, HongKong and Egypt in 2008; internationally 238 people have now died from avian flu, with most of these deaths being in Indonesia and Vietnam. Almost all of these cases have been caught from birds flu in Australia. Health authorities here closely monitor the situation in neighbouring countries and are well prepared for any Australian outbreak of this flu.

This inflammation of the bladder lining is caused by irritation or damage to the urethra, most commomly by E.coli bacteria entering the urinary tract through the urethra. Bacteria stick to the bladder wall and multiply, causing inflammation and irritation.
You’ll feel the need to urinate frequently but only pass a small amount of cloudy urine, and it will sting or burn when you pee.
It’s more common in women than men because we have a shorter urethra (the tube leading out of the bladder).
Mild cystitis will often go away by itself but if it doesn’t. you may need antibiotics.
Untreated cystitis can become serious if infection spreads to your kidneys, so see your GP if you still have sumptoms after three days.

Are you willing to put bird poo on your face if it delivered you a porcelain skin and invisible pores?
Many of you use an organic exfoliator that makes you look like you’ve planted your face in a bog.
Organic smells terrible and but you’ll see your skin will feel and look amazing afterwards.
These are just things many women are willing to do in the name of beauty. (see Kikay).
The nightingale droppings we’ve just learned Japanese women put on their face are, let’s be honest. likely to be nothing more than a pigeon poo.
But think about it. Women have been putting cucumbers on their eyes and mud on their bodies for centuries.
Not to mention the poisonous powders that sometimes killed. What’s little farces into the mix?
The cosmetic industry is an enormous booming beasts that uses nothing more than expensive trickery and beautiful airbrushed people to make women believe a cream will transform them.
Maybe you can’t get rid of the niggling hope that there is a magic cream out there somewhere that will make your skin perfect.
Bird poo facials to make your skin white may at first glance seem like a bizarre and obscure Japanese cultural thing but I’m sure they look at other’s tanning rituals as just as odd.
Think about this for a moment, girls (we know boys already see the folly in it): We stand in a booth in the nude getting sprayed with a liquid made of vegetable dye, sleep in it and make our sheets turn brown, all in order to achieve something that looks like a tan. Many of you do this weekly and pay through the nose for it.
Women’s beauty rituals are an will always be strange and mysterious. That’s part of our mystique. Men knows this, women often forget it.
But to me there is nothing wrong with wanting t be as beautiful as you can be and looking after yourself.
Bring on the bird poo, if that’s what makes your skin feel good.

A new once-a-day weight-lose pill can help woman drop two dress sizes in six months, British scientists have said.
A survey revealed women spend 10 years of their lives dieting.
Scientists have admitted they were astonished by trials on tesofensine, which could be on the market in three years.
By targeting the part of the brain that controls appetite, it makes the user fell full soon after starting a meal and cuts the urge to snack.
Taken for six months, it is said to help achieve an average weight loss of 9.5kg – twice the amount achieved by any obesity drug now on the market.
But there is a worrying list of side-effects – mild nausea, diarrhoea, constipation and increase heart rate.
Future trials will be held to determine whether the side-effects outweigh the benefits.
Meanwhile, a study by LIPObind, a company that makes natural weight-loss supplements, polled 4000 British women and found a third started dieting aged 16 or under.
It said the typical woman will go on two diets a year, each lasting on average five weeks.
That ads up to 104 diets from age 18 to 70, a whopping total of 10 years.
One in 10 women spend 25 years or more dieting.
But while each diet sees an average drop of 2.8kg, a quarter lose nothing at all.
Thirty-nine per cent said they dieted because they were embarrassed about their looks.
The same number admitted being shy when stripping off in front of their partner.
And a shocking 25 per cent would be willing to to under the knife to get rid of extra kilos.

Men should do pelvic floor exercise, similar to the moves the All Blacks perform during the haka, say researchers who claim they can be as effective as Viagra in curing impotence.
Researchers have found the sort of exercises women are taught to do post-natally- which involve simply contracting internal muscles – can be just as effective as Viagra, without the side-effects, including headaches and indigestion, that affect one of the 10 users.
In a study in the British Journal of General Practice, around 40 per cent of the men who worked at strengthening their pelvic floor muscles for three months regained full sexual function – a further 30 per cent had improved function.