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Every year doctors, clinics and pharmacies advertise that they have flu shots available, and every year many people just ignore them! Why get the flu shot if you’ve never had the flu? Flu couldn’t be that bad, could it? Everyone has heard about someone who got the flu shot and got sick from it, or got the flu despite having gotten the shot.

The word “flu” is commonly used to describe a wide variety of symptoms -- as just another way of saying the person is feeling bad. Most people mean they feel tired and feverish, have aches and pains and a headache, and maybe a cough or diarrhea. The word “flu” means as much or as little as people want. The word “influenza” as used by medical personnel, however, means something more specific and serious. The real influenza virus can be devastating.

Every year up to 20 per cent of the population gets influenza, 200,000 people are hospitalized from complications, and 36,000 die from it. At first glance the symptoms of influenza don’t sound that remarkable: headache, tiredness, fever, body aches; mild sore throat, cough, runny nose; and sometimes intestinal symptoms like diarrhea or vomiting. Having these symptoms might not mean you have influenza, because many different illnesses can involve the same symptoms. The difference with influenza is that a person feels very, very sick with these symptoms, not just laid low for a few days, and the fever is usually high, around 102 degrees, instead of just 100 degrees or less. The symptoms of influenza also last longer than the usual 2-3 days of most viruses and keep the person out of commission for a week or more. So, if it is flu season (October to February), “the flu” seems to be going around at work or at school, and you have the above symptoms to the extreme, you probably have influenza.

It is important to know whether you actually have influenza and not just a common, garden-variety virus, as there is specific medicine that can reduce the severity of influenza and cut the length of time you are sick if treated within 3 days of the onset of your symptoms. These anti-viral medicines can also be used to protect other people in your household if you test positive for influenza so you don’t spread the disease to them. This is especially important if you are living with people at high risk for complications from influenza: babies under 6 months of age, pregnant women, people with heart disease, diabetes, lung disease or other chronic medical illnesses; elderly persons; those with low immune states such as those with HIV/AIDS, or those on chemotherapy for cancer. Caregivers of any of these high-risk people should be vaccinated.

A specific test is available at your doctor’s office to determine if your symptoms are from the influenza virus. The test is a painless nasal swab that gives a positive or negative answer within minutes. If you find out you are positive for influenza, then you will know what to expect about the course of your illness over the next ten days, and you will be able to inform others around you so they can get preventive treatment in the form of anti-viral medicines. In addition, you might be able to receive anti-viral pills that will make you feel better quicker.

The best way to prevent influenza is to get the flu shot, which is an injection of the killed virus, or the nasal-spray flu vaccine, which is a weakened version of the live virus and is safe for people age 2-49 who are not pregnant and have normal immune systems. The shot and nasal spray are available now, and their protection lasts throughout the influenza season. The peak of the flu season is usually in January or February, but many cases start as early as October. The shot is reformulated each year to contain the 3 most common strains of viruses that caused influenza during the previous flu season, so it is necessary to get a new flu shot every year.

The Centers for Disease Control added a new recommendation this year: all children age 5-18 years old should be vaccinated. This is in addition to the CDC’s previous recommendation that children 6 months to 4 years old should get the vaccination. Children aged 6 months to 8 years old need to receive 2 doses of the vaccine, and all others just need to receive one dose. According to the CDC, people over 50 and everyone in a high-risk category should receive the flu shot.

That leaves one group of people, the healthy young adult population aged 19 to 49, without a specific recommendation to get the shot. This makes no sense to me -- if they all end up getting influenza, it is a sure bet that people in the high-risk groups will get it, too! For example, the mother of a 4-month-old child needs to get a flu shot to make sure she doesn’t pass the virus to her vulnerable child. So it makes sense for even that healthy middle group to get the flu shot, too.

This year stop ignoring the flu shot advertising. Do a favor to yourself, as well as those around you, by getting a flu shot.

Dr. Louise Moody is a partner in Secure Medical Care, a walk-in urgent care medical clinic, located at 10452 Baltimore Ave, in Beltsville, MD, 301.441.3355, www.securemedicalcare.com.