Creatin?g general article,/ 'system'; diseases

At the end of a common cold, you’re ready to get on with your life. A word of warning, though: Something worse may be brewing deep in your lungs given your overwhelmed immune defenses.

You know what a cold feels like, right? Well, bronchitis is that kicked up a few notches.

Bronchitis occurs when air-carrying tubes in your lungs become inflamed, often after a viral infection such as a cold or the flu, says Dr. Tolle. As these airways (called bronchioles) swell, they begin to fill with icky-and-sticky mucus.

In response, you cough… and cough… and cough. That frequent hacking often brings up that yellow-green mucus from your lungs. (That off-putting color is a key sign of infection.)

Aside from coughing, other symptoms of bronchitis may include:

• A wheezing sound when breathing.
• Body aches (plus a sore chest from all that coughing).
• Fatigue.
• A mild fever.

he common symptoms of these two diseases — cough, fever, fatigue and an aching chest — are very similar. Bronchitis can even progress to pneumonia in some cases.

But these are two very different diseases affecting different parts of the lungs, says Dr. Tolle. Pneumonia symptoms also are usually much more serious and, in some cases, potentially life-threatening.

The bottom line? If you have symptoms that match either bronchitis and pneumonia and they don’t improve within a week, or if the symptoms keep worsening, contact your healthcare provider.