Forum for all your questions about Glandular fever and to answer questions from others.As a result of many questions about Glandular fever, I decided to make this page. I tried to read as much information from sites and encyclopedias as possible to inform you. If you have further questions or you want to receive more information, you can always mail me.
97% of all the people 30 years and older have had a Glandular fever infection.
Symptoms don't appear for everyone.
It's a pity that almost everyone has incorrect information about glandular fever. It's very difficult to find the right information about it. When I had doubts, I believed the information that fit my symptoms at that time.
Glandular fever is a fatigue illness. Usually it begins with fever and a sore throat or laryngitis. The lymph nodes (purification glands of your body) will swell up (you can feel this for example under your armpit or in your neck) and often there is poor appetite. The liver can become painful and inflamed. The spleen often enlarges. Sometimes there are other complications, like red rash, or rash on the mucous membrane of the mouth.
You can diagnose Glandular fever with a blood test. So if you think you have Glandular fever: go to your family doctor to have a blood test. After about a week you will know if the result is positive or negative.
Another name for Glandular fever is kissing disease. The disease is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus which is transferable via saliva. So you can get Glandular fever when you kiss somebody (or when somebody kisses you), when you drink from the same glass, when you use the same cutlery, when somebody coughs in your face, etc.
The hard thing is that you only can get Glandular fever when you have a low resistance to infection. When you come into
contact with the virus and you have a high resistance, it may not produce symptoms.
The laryngitis and the fever are usually short term symptoms. I had the flu and fever for just one week. But the tiredness can last a very long time. Some people are very tired for just one week, and then it's over. Others have problems for months. Most internet sites and encyclopedias say it lasts 3 to 4 weeks but the aftermath can take years. I was tired every autumn and spring for a few years. In the summer and the winter I felt better. But it's tricky the fatigue is different per person, so you can never know when Glandular fever is over.
That's difficult. There is no medicine for it. You just have to 'listen to your own body'. So sleep enough and do not overexert yourself. When you feel you have to stop, then stop. If you don't, the disease will last longer.
You can take Echinaforce. It helps you raise your resistance and helps your body to fight harder against the disease. Of course eating many fruits and vegetables and drinking fruit juice is healthy too. You have to drink plenty of water, but not too much. Drinking water helps you to remove the waste products from your body (But don't drink TOO MUCH water, because that's not good. You have to drink 2,5 to 3 litres of water per day, that's more than enough).
It's sensible to drink little to no alcohol, because it affects your liver.
Opinions about this are different. Anyway, it's sure that you are infectious in the incubation period. The incubation period is the time that you are infected with the virus, but it doesn't produce symptoms. The incubation time lasts 4 to 6 weeks. After that time the chance of infecting others decreases, but the virus stays in the throat. So you can infect others for some years (or for your whole life, but nobody knows for sure).
Well, there are differing opinions about this. A doctor will probably say that you can only get Glandular fever once. But some people have had other experiences with it when the virus appeared in their blood tests twice. But in general you can get it just once.
When you think that you have Glandular fever for the second time, maybe you have a 'brother' or a 'sister' from it. With me it was like that. I had Glandular fever for a few months and the fatigue didn't decrease. So I was tested for cytomegalovirus, and the results were positive. But now I can't get that again, either.
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