Name: How to protect yourself this flu season
Uploaded: 2025-12-30T19:25:33.995Z
Duration: 3 min 46 s
Description: Flu season is here. A local expert shares advice on how to protect yourself.

Flu season is here. A local expert shares advice on how to protect yourself.

Milwaukee

Dr. Jeff Potthoff from UW Health provided advice on protecting against the flu, highlighting the importance of vaccination, hand hygiene, and isolating sick individuals to prevent the spread of illness. He emphasized that it is still possible to get vaccinated, but immunity takes about two weeks to develop.

The segment also addressed a new study suggesting that over 75% of U.S. adults could be classified as obese under updated criteria, which consider factors beyond BMI. Additionally, Dr. Potthoff offered strategies for coping with post-holiday blues, such as gradually returning to routines, exercising, getting adequate sleep, reconnecting with others, and avoiding social media comparisons.

How to protect yourself this flu season

We're following several health-related stories this afternoon, and to help break it all down is Dr. Jeff Potthoff from UW Health joining us live. Good afternoon, Doctor. We want to get to the number one health story right now. That is the flu. We talked about it earlier in the hour, an aggressive flu variant that is going around. So let's talk about how people can protect themselves from getting sick, many of us traveling, celebrating right now. And what should you do if you start to notice symptoms? Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. I think, you know, as far as protecting yourself from influenza, you know, one of the things that can really decrease your chance of coming down with severe disease is getting vaccinated. Now, it's still not too late to get vaccinated, but that window is certainly closing. It takes about two weeks to get that immunity, and the flu has arrived. I think, likewise, pay attention to hand-washing, keeping those surfaces clean, especially if you have someone in your home who's come down with flu-like illness. Maybe have them spend most of the time in one room, you know, wear a mask if they're out amongst the house, and then wash those surfaces down. And then I think there's what we need to do to protect other people. So if we come down with those symptoms, so fever over 100.5, that sore throat, that headache, those muscle aches, you know, you may be tempted to take two Tylenol and head out and do your business, but that's how we spread flu to other people. And some people do fine with flu, but some people don't do fine with flu. They get, you know, really sick. Yeah, some good information there. Thanks, Doctor. Let's turn to this, a new study. More than 75% of U.S. adults may meet criteria for obesity under new definitions. What can you tell us about that? So this is coming from a large group, 76 different organizations from around the world, looking at 230-some million patients. And what we've always dealt with is using BMI to determine whether someone is obese or not obese. And there's just a lot of issues with the BMI. Sometimes it can categorize people as obese who aren't, and sometimes people are categorized not obese when maybe they are. They're looking at additional factors you can bring in, so like waist circumference, weight-to-height ratios, things like that, and then trying to determine if there's a better way to define obesity, whether that's preclinical obesity, so maybe you have too much fat tissue, but it's not causing problems, versus clinical obesity, where maybe more aggressive treatment needs to be taken. More work to come, though. I don't think we're going to classify 70 people as obese. 75% of people as obese. Okay. And our last topic here might resonate with a lot of people around the holiday season. We're talking about the post-holiday blues. What are some of the best ways for people to beat those feelings? Yeah, so the post-holiday blues really come from that lack of routine. So all of us have, like, the daily grind, what we do. The holidays tend to disrupt that, and when you get back into the routine, it leads to a little bit of feeling blue. So things that you can do, one, know that you're not going to be on your A-game that first day. You're going to kind of ease back into your routine gradually, so give yourself grace there. Exercise can help with some of these feelings, those endorphins that we create. Make sure you get good sleep. The holidays are not often restful this time of year. People are running around like crazy, so get good sleep. Reconnect with people at work, kind of build those relationships, and also avoid comparing yourself on social media. Everyone's posting how great their holiday is. It sometimes makes you feel that yours isn't as great. Just know everyone posts the best of their holiday on social media. We all have those things that didn't go perfect, and that's one of the ways that you can kind of beat these blues as we kind of all get back into that normal routine over the next couple weeks. Yeah, important to remember that social media is just a highlight reel, and I like what you said about giving ourselves a little bit of grace this time of year. Thanks, Dr. Jeff Ponthoff. Great to see you. Appreciate your time and your insight this afternoon.

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Breakdown