Patch Chatter

How Are You Battling the Flu Season?

Help other readers stay healthy, share your remedies in the comment section below.

Do you wash your hands regularly? You might want to after reading this article. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has labeled the 2013 flu season as one of the worst in the past decade, and the season isn’t even over, Wall Street Journal reported.  The Illinois Department of Public Health says almost 150 people were admitted to hospital intensive care units with severe cases of the flu from October through December 2012, ABCLocal.go.com reported.  Illinois is reporting widespread flu activity, according to CDC data, and a search on Google flu trends, which tracks flu-related searches, shows Illinois as a solid red, for intense activity.  Do you have a special recipe to fight the flu? Share your secrets and help other readers …

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Chi-an Chang

12:04 pm on Monday, January 14, 2013

Patch blogger Dr. Jan and Jade Leasure shared this post on five natural remedies to battle the flu: http://deerfield.patch.com/blog_posts/grandmas-kitchen-5-natural-flu-remedies   more ›

Whipping the Whooping Cough

How to prevent and treat one of the season's worst offenders.

With temperatures dipping to below freezing, colds, flu and stomach bugs rapidly spread this time of year as everyone fights to stay warm. But there's another type of illness that has been on the rise for children—the whooping cough. Dr. Jim Olson of Kids Heath Partners in Skokie said whooping cough, which can be fatal to infants, usually "starts off like a cold, and at the normal time a cold starts to get better, the cough begins to get a lot worse." According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, early symptoms of whooping cough, also known as pertussis, include: Olson stressed that the disease is "very easily spreadable if you're not vaccinated," adding that there is really no treatment for the cough once is fully kicks in …

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