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Headache and fever: symptoms of a common flu or the beginning of one of the many forms of meningitis?  In this article we'll give you guidelines to help you understand whether to run to the hospital or to simply help a person recover from a cold.

When your child or relative has a high fever and complains of a headache, and at the same time the television reports of deaths due to meningitis, it's hard to feel secure.  In this situation it's useful to know how to act with the proper caution, recognize the real danger signs and avoid being led astray by those that might be misleading.

What are the danger signs?

The symptoms aren't always very evident, and a doctor must be contacted in the case of a very suspicious symptom, but anyone can usually understand the initial symptoms that should make us suspicious.   The beginning of the disease, at least in the purulent forms, is sudden, characterized by shivers, high fever, serious indisposition, headache and sometimes vomiting.  The senses are often dulled and precocious signs of lethargy can be noted.  This means that if your child gets up every once in a while to wander around the house to watch television in the living room, he probably doesn't have meningitis.

The most evident signs in children, in the presence of which a parent should immediately call a doctor are as follows: 1) difficulty in getting up from bed, 2) rigidity at the base of the neck (bending the head forward may be difficult and painful), 3) strange crossing of the legs (a child instinctively seeks an analgesic position that provides relief for the neck).

In addition, the patient complains continuously, has a high fever that can even exceed 40° and gives scarce response to external stimuli.  If these symptoms are present, and a if doctor isn't available, the parents must take the child to the hospital immediately.  If the symptoms are suspicious, the diagnosis will be confirmed or excluded by a blood test or, better yet, a spinal tap: by examining the fluid (that becomes altered considerably in the presence of the disease) it's possible to perform a diagnosis and proceed with the specific therapy.

Meningitis: how many forms exist?

One of the biggest problems today is that people are not aware of the fact that meningitis can depend on numerous different bacterial strains (or sometimes even viral strains).   The most important ones are:

Just recently the Italian newspaper Republica published an anguished letter by Mr Francesco Angelici (from Rome).  Mr. Angelici lost his three and a half year-old son to type B meningitis after having vaccinated him for type C meningitis.  He implored the authorities to explain to the public that the vaccination does not eliminate the risk as the media reports would seem to imply.  As a matter of fact, according to the latest studies, like the Greek one published in August of 2007 (Theodoridou MN et al, BMC Infect Dis 2007 Aug 30;7;101), each time a vaccine is introduced, the response to the type involved diminishes while the response to the other types of meningitis grows considerably.  The real prevention therefore lies in careful nutritional choices, mineral supplements and maintaining an efficient immune system. This is true for all bacterial and viral diseases.  Even the OMS clearly states that vaccination (of any sort). 

How to defend yourself

As we have already emphasized in reference to the flu, the first defense strategy is reducing to a minimum the possible occasions  for infection, also avoiding closed and crowded areas.  The second consists in improving the quality of our body's responses as explained in the article "Fight the flu using natural strategies".  The third involves paying attention to proper nutrition and supplementing with those substances that stimulate immune defenses, in particular Oximix 1, Manganese Copper Zinc, Inositol , Oscillococcinum 200K, Vitamin C, Echinacea.

Doctor Attilio Speciani
Clinical Allergist and Immunologist

IIstructions for use

Cellfood
Rebalance Oximix

Italian version