"Winter doesn’t create weakness; it exposes it. Protect your lungs before the season tests them."

As we love and eagerly wait for winter's arrival, it also brings a lot of diseases that make this joyful season hard to spend. These diseases have different life spans and can worsen your winter experience. Some are deadly, while others are like the flu that you can cure with a cup of green tea.

There are three kinds of diseases that you can encounter during the winter season.

• Infection caused by viruses
• Diseases caused by Bacteria
• Superimposed Infections

Viruses cause these infections. Top of this list is the Influenza Virus, which is responsible for the majority of flu people suffer from in winter. Influenza is like the flu for young and immunocompetent people, while it's deadly for the elderly and immunocompromised population. The immunocompromised population is the one that is suffering from chronic infections, and their immunity is weakened during this time. Rhinovirus follows influenza. Most of the common cold infections are caused by this culprit. The mode of transmission for the majority of these winter viruses is through sneezing or touching infected hands.

COVID-19 is in the third position of winter viruses. 2 years ago, it was deadly, but now, due to widespread vaccination against it, immunity has been built up in the population.

The good thing about viral infection is that it recovers quickly; you just have to get supportive care till the peak period of the disease passes. Viral infections can be combated with widespread vaccination, so it's advisable to receive yearly and seasonal vaccines to combat such infections.

Bacterial infection covers half of the disease that is caused in winter. These infections are deadly and need treatment with antibiotics. Now, an important question arises: how will you differentiate between viral and bacterial infection? That's a big debate, and we will keep it for another blog post, but to give you some idea, I will throw light on some of the markers that we see around.

A complete blood count gives you some idea about whether the infection is viral or bacterial. Blood culture and viral PCR confirm our suspicion, and then the response after antibacterial therapy. If it's bacterial, it will respond promptly to our therapy, while in a viral case, its response will be ambiguous.

Some famous bacteria that can affect you in winter and cause disease are Streptococcus pneumonae, Haemophilus influenzae, and Staphylococcus aureus.

Every organism has symptoms that help respiratory physicians make a diagnosis and order a set of tests that will help them confirm their diagnosis. Once the diagnosis is confirmed, treatment can be done with broad-spectrum antibiotics and along with supporting staff. Remember that these respiratory diseases spread via droplets, and anyone who is coughing or sneezing will be a source of their spread. Wearing masks during this disease can disrupt their flow. Secondly, it spreads via using each other's utensils, so if you can just isolate your drink and eating utensils, you will be able to break the chain of the disease.

Here is the third set of respiratory diseases that are not that common, but people of extremeages and are deadly most of the time. Superimposed infections are the type of infection that will arise when there is already ground ready for infection, for example, a person is having a stroke and has aspirated his vomitus, then this vomitus will damage the protective layers of the lungs and bacteria present in vomitus will cause infection.

People suffering from chronic diseases like Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or pulmonary tuberculosis will already have damaged their lungs. Its excretion system, via the ciliary system, is already destroyed by the chronic disease. Some bugs, like fungi that are present in polluted areas, get into the lungs and reside in the damaged part of the lungs, causing chronic infection. Some of the bugs worth mentioning are fungus(Aspergillus) and Bacterias that are normal, friendly bacteria, but when gets chance, they become enemies to the body.

This was a summary of winter-related diseases. We will get into more detail in the upcoming blog post along with YouTube videos for better understanding.