Hm, might that account for that sham cold “remedy” (what was it called?) that was developed by a teacher? The teacher had colds for a few years, started taking some herbal concoction, and stopped getting colds.
Small kids have weaker immune systems and are less hygenic. They constantly put things in their mouths, up their noses, etc. They tend to spend a large amount of time in close contact with other kids too. So that explains why kids get sick.
Then they come home to you, and you spend more time touching them, breathing the air they have exhaled, and picking up tiny specs of their faeces and vomit.
Plus the added bonus that evolution is sometimes quick enough, especially of some viruses, for them to have partly adapted to your child’s immune system. And since your child’s immune system is made from parts of it’s parents immune systems, when a disease partly adapts to one, it’s partly adapted to the other.
There is also the dreaded calicivirus. There is usually a couple of outbreaks every vinter in Sweden. Incubation period a couple of days, violently sick usually with cascade vomiting, for a day or two, and health authoritys recommend you to stay at home for two more days. Also the immunity you get doesn’t last very long. Nasty.
Diarrhoea- most often caused by eating something bad.
Diarrhoea+ vomiting+fever- most often viral, sometimes full on food poisoning.
As someone who worked in a paediatric ER and saw kids with D&V on a daily basis, and who then had to sign off the results of their stool viral and bacterial cultures- viruses cause the VAST majority of kiddy D&V.
Rota, noro, astro, adeno- lots of them.
So many, in fact, that even if the viral screen was negative, if the kid had typical symptoms and got better (and yes, negative results mean a phone call to check teh kid is ok), we wrote it off as a less common virus the lab didn’t simply test for (because the lab only tests for the most common bugs).
Any child who tested positive for bacteria in their stool was given a diagnosis of food poisoning, and was automatically referred to the office of public health. That really didn’t happen that much.
We’ve just switched nurseries for our 2 y/old daughter, so we’re now working our way through a whole load of exciting new viruses.
Plus it’s worse right after the summer holidays, as kids travel to other parts of the world and bring back some of the local viral wildlife with them.
A couple of co-workers commented that I’ve had more colds etc over the last 18 months, which must be greatly down to having a toddler around the place.
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To the op itself: Preschoolers spread germs among themselves with great efficiency and to you. As one of my old Infectious Diseases professors put it: “If you have a preschooler in your house, you have a microscopic layer of stool over every surface. Just accept that fact.” You have a much greater exposure to these pathogens from your child than you ever get from a coworker. And they are not the same pathogens that you were exposed to years ago; they are constantly evolving. But as noted, your immune systems will be brought to speed within a few seasons.
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Indeed most “stomach flu” is caused by viruses. A fairly recent vaccine against Rotavirus has dramatically decreased the numbers who get sick enough to need hospitalization, but there are still many cases of milder Rotaviral infections and, as noted, a plethora of other viruses that cause self-limited cases of gastroenteritis. The exposure is usually fecal-oral. Most of never test unless we have reason to suspect a bacterial cause (eg higher fever with bloody and/or mucousy diarrhea and/or severe cramping.) I cannot make the same distinction between the presence or absence of vomiting that irishgirl makes.
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“Food poisoning” different things depending on who you talk to. I learned it as meaning mediated by toxins from bacteria in the food but some define it as merely transmitted by food, be it bacterial toxin, other toxin, of infectious. Some germs can be transmitted by either fecal-oral or foodborne routes.
I don’t have kids, but it seemed like I had more colds in the time I worked in Pediatrics than I’d had in my entire life. Remember that most adults are better at covering for a sneeze, using a tissue, not just letting snot run down their faces, wiping their bottoms and washing after, etc. Plus kids in schools touch each other a lot in play and affection, so they’re lots more efficient at spreading germs amongst each other.
Last Christmas I visited friends who had a 3-year-old with a persistent cold; they assured me it’d just been hanging on for weeks - as she sneezed in the kitchen around the prepared food. At that point I realized I was already in trouble as she’d surely germed-up the whole house. The next day, her parents realized she’d actually brought home a new virus as they came down with terrible colds, and my husband and I got so sick within a few days that we had to stay home from work a day.
Germ incubators, I tell you.