What Does It Feel Like to Have the Flu?
Key takeaways:
The flu is a respiratory infection caused by influenza viruses.
Some symptoms of this respiratory illness are fever, cough, and body aches.
When you have the flu, it can leave you feeling wiped out.
You know that feeling of having fever, chills, body aches, congestion, and fatigue? Sometimes, it’s undeniably the flu. And it’s miserable.
The flu is a respiratory infection caused by influenza viruses. These viruses usually spread through the air or on contaminated surfaces. And they’re among the several viruses that cause the common cold. They can also lead to other more serious illnesses, like lower respiratory tract infections, including pneumonia.
Here is how three people describe what having the flu feels like.
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Like being hit by a train
Aghogho Boccardi, a 30-year-old, stay-at-home mom and blogger in New York City, knows when the flu is coming on.
For her, it starts with an itchy, sore throat and gets worse from there. The day after her throat begins to hurt, the body aches start to set in.
“I just feel this aching, almost literally like you were run over by a train,” Aghogho says. “Your muscles hurt. You can barely move from the bed.”
She remembers the flu keeping her down for a week when she was a college student. Now that she’s married and has a toddler, she’s experienced the flu bringing down her whole family.
“When [my son] was sick, I had to be up with him,” she says. “Then, the next day, I had to function enough to do my regular mommy duties.”
She says you just have to ride it out: “There really is no treatment to be honest. You just kind of suffer through it.”
Worse than a cold
Cara Berkeley, a 46-year-old marketing professional and blogger in Nashville, is familiar with the fever, the chills, and body aches.
She remembers the best thing about being sick when she was little was her mom making a mixture of grape juice and Sprite to keep her hydrated. But, as an adult, she can’t find a silver lining to having the flu.
“You cannot work or do anything at the same time,” Cara says. “You’re just kind of stuck in bed because of how badly you feel. It’s way worse than a cold or anything else.”
That’s why Cara regularly gets a flu shot: She doesn’t want to experience flu symptoms again.
“I think that the flu, in particular, is a much worse feeling than other sicknesses,” she says.
The flu hits you ‘like a ton of bricks’
Kate Dee, a 54-year-old physician in Seattle, says the flu “tends to hit you like a ton of bricks.”
The first time she had the flu was when she was a third-year medical student. She felt fine, and then suddenly she felt terrible. She had a fever, headache, and cough, and she couldn’t sit up without feeling dizzy.
“I felt like I was gonna die for about a week,” Kate remembers.
The second time Kate had the flu was in September 2009. She had H1N1, a flu strain that made a lot of people sick that year.
“I was ghostly white, and all of a sudden I would just be sweating,” Kate says. She went to the doctor because she was having trouble breathing.
“I remember having to sleep in a different room from my spouse because I coughed all night long,” she says.
Even Kate’s bout of COVID last year was more mild than her second round of flu, she says. Her experiences with the flu put things into perspective.
“It makes you realize that the worst cold you ever had was nothing,” she says.
What does the doctor say?
Patricia Pinto-Garcia, MD, MPH
Medical Editor
Influenza viruses come and go every year during flu season. They stand apart from other common cold viruses for many reasons. For one thing, an upper respiratory tract infection from the influenza virus is no ordinary cold. It comes on all of a sudden and causes intense symptoms like fever, body aches, headaches and cough.
Influenza (also known as “the flu”) is also more likely to lead to more serious illnesses like pneumonia, bronchitis, and even illnesses outside the respiratory tract. Other common cold viruses tend to stay within the respiratory tract, and most don’t bother your lungs.
If you test positive for the flu, make sure you talk to your healthcare provider about whether you should take an antiviral medication like Tamiflu. An antiviral can help you feel better faster, but you need to start taking it within 48 hours of getting sick or it won’t help. You should also stay home from work or school until your fever goes away and you start feeling better. The flu is very contagious, so you don’t want to spread it to your friends and family. Getting a flu shot every year is the best way to protect yourself against the infection.
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