January 2018 - Elite Care Family Medicine

When cold weather hits or allergy season comes around, you can hear it. The sound of countless people hacking up a lung. While coughing is a pain, its purpose is to protect you. It’s a reflex that rids the body of things that don’t belong in your respiratory system like inhaled dirt, food, germs, and excess mucus. Many things can trigger a cough, but here are a few of the most common. Viruses Cold and the flu are the most common causes of a cough. The purpose of...

When most people have cold symptoms like fever, runny nose, or a cough, they expect to slow down. They expect to be back to normal in a few days. If symptoms linger or worsen to the point where they're not enough to keep a person off their feet, but they’re bad enough for that person to notice, it may be walking pneumonia. Walking pneumonia sounds scary, but it’s actually a less severe case of pneumonia. With walking pneumonia a hospital stay is often not...

There’s no doubt winter is the season for colds. Even the name “the common cold” seems to suggest that lower temperatures contribute to the nose-running, throat-burning misery. For many years medical professionals denied this correlation. Researchers told us the cold weather had nothing to do with getting sick. Turns out, grandma was right on this one and the researchers were wrong. It was and still is common knowledge that cold and flu germs make us sick. When the...

Have you had your flu shot yet? The flu season is in full swing, and while this season has been well below epidemic levels Mississippi has still been one of the states hardest hit this year. According to the CDC, Mississippi had an influenza-like illness rate of 6.1% well above the national average of 2.3%. The nation has experienced a mild flu season overall as of the week ending December 2, 2017. However, the disease has caused hospitalizations and casualties this...