Typhoid Fever – Causes, Symptoms and Treatment
Typhoid is a common bacterial disease caused by salmonella typhi. The infection is triggered by ingestion of food, contaminated water with the feces of infected person that contains bacterium salmonella typhi. The infection causes high typhoid fever leading to the damage of small intestine. Typhoid Fever received several names like gastric fever, abdominal typhus, infantile ramittant fever, slow fever, nervous fever, pythogenic fever.
Typhoid fever is divided into four stages. In the first week, there is slow rise in the body temperature along with headache, malaise, bradycardia, and decrease in the count of white blood cells. Nose bleeding and abdominal pain is also examined in one fourth of the cases. In the second week of infection, there is high body temperature, red spots on chest and abdomen. There are rhonchi in the lung bases. Diarrhea occurs at this stage, there are 6-8 times green stool with characteristic smell comparable to pea soup. In the third week of typhoid fever situation gets worse and complicated like intestinal hemorrhage, metastatic abscesses, neuropsychiatric symptom etc.
Several health campaigns have been organized since years, to generate awareness among the people on health issues. It is important to keep your surroundings neat, wash your hands after defecating and before having food is important to avoid bacterial infection. A bacterium that causes typhoid fever is spread through contaminated water, hygiene habits, insects, public sanitation conditions etc. the bacteria enters into your intestine, than to your bloodstream where they can get into your liver, gallbladder, lymph, spleen and other parts of the body.
Typhoid fever at an early stage gives you headache, abdominal pain, increased body temperature and diarrhea when the situation gets worse. Other symptoms of typhoid fever are;
• Abdominal tenderness
• Agitation
• Blood stool
• Chills
• Confusion
• Difficulty paying attention
• Delirium
• Fluctuating mood
• Hallucination
• Nosebleed
• Fatigue
• Weakness
Antibiotics are proved effective in killing the bacteria salmonella typhi. Several antibiotics have come across to treat typhoid fever. Chloramphenicol is widely used due to less risk of side effects from it. Antibiotic is prescribed according to the geographical condition from and the result of cultures once occurred. With the correct antibiotics, there is improvement in usually one or two days or within 10 days. Treatment for typhoid;
• Take raisins so as to overcome fatigue. Soak the raisins in water for a night and have them the next day. It helps in quick recovery
• Make a mixture of 1 teaspoon of cumin seeds with 1 teaspoon of sugar to cure stomach ache
• Consume considerable amount of fluid like fruit juices, water, glucose water, coconut water or soups
• Homeopathy mixture biochemical 28 is beneficial for entire system resulting in speedy recovery.
• Take rest for 1 week and so, your body needs rest to recover
• Take boiled and filtered water
• Wash hands and keep your surroundings clean
• Always keep food covered
• Eat steaming hot food
Follow the doctor’s guidance for antibiotics or any kind of drugs.
This article has been written and posted by a health advisor working at bookmydoctor.com, who also provides free of cost consultancy to patients and advise on various topics like causes of typhoid by visiting the site, you can read articles on symptoms of typhoid and treatment of typhoid and for more information click the Hyperlink.
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