Living with Upper Respiratory Tract Infection (URTI)

Feels like you’re catching a cold again? Well, you’re not alone.

We all have that one person in our friends’ group or at our workplace who falls ill often and remain absent for days from office. You’ll mostly find them sniff in their tissues and take medicine. Why is it that few people are often sick? Is it just a ‘cold’, or something else?

In this blog, we’re going to tell if you have the common cold or something more serious that requires medical attention, such as upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) - how it affects your life and what can you do to cope with it.

Upper Respiratory Tract Infection (URTI)

Upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) is the illness caused by an acute infection which involves your upper respiratory tract: nose, sinuses, pharynx, larynx, or bronchi.

This infection occurs when bacteria or viruses infect any one or more of these parts of the upper respiratory system and causes upper respiratory infection symptoms like watery nasal mucus, sneezing, blocked nose, headache, fatigue, fever, sore throat, and cough.

The most common URTI diseases are tonsillitis, rhinitis, laryngitis, acute otitis media (ear infection), and sinusitis. Each of them affects one’s ability to function normally at least for a couple of days.

Impact of Recurrent infections

While all of us have experienced cold symptoms at some point in our lives, upper respiratory infection could give sleepless nights to many people because of its recurrent nature of infections. Repeated infections tend to make your defense system weaker with each bout of cold, even though you recover easily with home remedies or antibiotic pills.

Being a contagious disease, children are the most affected individuals by upper respiratory tract infection. This is because children have not yet built up immunity (resistance) to the many viruses that can cause these infections. Also, they are more prone to getting infections as they get in constant touch with other kids and things at play or school who could be virus carriers. Children often don’t wash their hands regularly. They rub their eyes and put their fingers in their mouths, resulting in the spread of viruses.

Usually, the cold gets better in 3-4 days, but upper respiratory infection may last longer to 7-10 days or even more, if not treated on time. It is the most common cause of days missed from work or school and one of the most common reasons for a medical visit.

So, what do you do to treat the illness? You will take your sick child to the doctor every time he gets a runny nose or fever and it’s likely that the doctor will give you an antibiotic in your hand to pop thrice/twice in a day. As a result, your child feels better in two days but what happens after that - Doesn’t your child falls sick again?

With every dose of antibiotic, your child’s immune system gets weaker. It doesn’t get a chance to develop antibodies to fight against infection on its own. Eventually, he may develop antibiotic resistance or may get drug-induced rhinitis “Rhinitis medicamentosa”.

What can you do to safely treat your upper respiratory infection?

Homeopathy can be offered as a safe and effective alternative to help patients recover more quickly from upper respiratory tract infection.

Upper respiratory tract infection treatment in homeopathy identifies the characteristic symptoms of the disease in an individual person. Therefore, the remedies suggested to each and every individual is different, depending on the: individual symptoms, factors causing the disease, triggering factors, and accompanying symptoms.

It has been seen that homeopathic treatment when given for a sustained period of time brings down the intensity, frequency and duration of upper respiratory infection. It also helps in building up self-immunity.

So, the next time you feel you’re going to catch a cold or have a runny nose, don’t allow it to play sniffles with you. Beat your ‘nosey blues’ with homeopathy, promptly.