Dr. Robert Wesley talks Flu Season

Dr. Robert Wesley discusses what you can do to keep you and those around you healthy this flu season!

Full Transcript of Dr. Wesley:
I'm Rob Wesley. I'm a family medicine physician with Graves Gilbert Clinic in Franklin, Kentucky.

Flu season is just around the corner and the question is, how to patients get ready for that? What can they do to prevent the flu? What can they do to treat it if they get it?

Everybody has heard about flu shots. The flu shots are against at least three different strains of the flu and typically nowadays we're using what's called a quadrivalent flu shot, which covers three different flu viruses that are predominant around the world, so it's a moving target every year for us to try to keep up with this organism. It's a scary bug.

The biggest myth is, I got the flu from my flu shot last year so I don't want to take it this year.

The majority of flu vaccines that we have now are actually killed virus vaccines, they cannot infect you.

Most people do experience a little bit of immune response when they take a flu shot and that's a sign that the vaccine is working. It's generating an immune response in your body to certain pieces of that virus, so that if your body encounters it again in the future, it's going to be primed and ready to fight it off and so you might get a little headache, you might get a little bit of a sniffle, and you might feel kind of puny for a day, but that's not a sign that you're actually getting the flu.

The flu is not an insignificant illness. We have about 23,000 people die every year in America from the flu and flu related illnesses, which is staggering when you think about it, that's a significant size city that we lose every year.

There are simple things that folks can do to prevent the flu from hand washing, making sure they're cleaning their shopping carts when they go out, covering your mouth with your elbow when you cough, cleaning the gas pumps and using hand sanitizer frequently. That can prevent transmission of the disease when you're in the middle of flu season, but also if you're sick, stay home. The flu has an incubation period of about seven days where you may be contagious and not showing any symptoms at all, so you may think that you're better, but you may still be shedding virus and making other people sick, so give yourself a break, stay home, get lots of rest, and treat yourself good so you do get better.

That's one of the most important things I think I could say particularly with school-age children.


Graves Gilbert Clinic is a multispecialty clinic located in Bowling Green, Kentucky housing more than 125 physicians, 50 physician assistants and nurse practitioners who continue to lead the way in medical innovation and technology and serve South Central Kentucky with the same level of care and dedication that their founding fathers promised over 80 years ago when Dr. Graves and Dr. Gilbert shook hands and made a commitment to the future: A commitment to a Lifetime of Care. Learn more at

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