What's the Real Cause of Common Colds?

Authors Note: The following piece is a research essay on the “common cold”. Questions such as what it is, how it is caused, if there are cures, and the difference between a cold and allergies will be answered.

As the common cold is spread throughout the world each day, a small amount of people actually know what it really is, what causes it, or if there are permanent cures. Many get sick and think it’s just a cold, but do they really know what caused it or even it wasn’t just a cold? It’s important to know about common colds because knowing more about the substances causing you to not feel well will only help you liberate the virus faster.

To begin, people are receiving colds year after year; most don’t know what a cold exactly is other than the symptoms. “The common cold is a self-limited sickness that can be caused by a number of different types of viruses” (Steven Doerr). Symptoms for most colds are coughing, sneezing, runny nose, fever, etc.  “A person is infectious with their illness starting the day before the sickness acts up, until a few days after they start feeling better” (Korsholm).The most known way of spreading and catching a cold is when the person who is sick touches their area around their eyes and nose because the virus could be on their hands also.

Second of all, “Cold's are caused by numerous different viruses, while allergies are caused by an overactive immune system” (Is it a Common Cold or Allergies?). The most important difference between common cold's and allergies is that colds don’t last longer than 14 days, so if the symptoms are still there after 2 weeks, it may be allergy symptoms.

Furthermore, “Although there are medicines at stores that are used to treat the symptoms for the common cold, they have little to no affect on the cold itself” (Szabo). There have been medicines tested in a Petri dish and many have been appearing as promising, but once tested on humans, unfortunately, the cold remedies start to fizzle off. The result to their experimenting shows that there are no permanent cures to the common cold.

In conclusion, the reasons discussed state why it's important to know everything about the sickness you have whether or not it's a common cold or allergies. Knowing what you have, what's causing your sickness or allergy, and how you can treat it is information that is useful for patients that are dealing with the symptoms of the common cold or allergies.