The 2025 flu season has turned out to be unlike any other in recent memory. This year, the flu season is marked by record-setting infections, multiple viral peaks, vaccine mismatches, and an overstretched healthcare system.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), this year’s influenza activity is the most intense since the 2009 swine flu pandemic, with over 80 million estimated illnesses and rising. What’s driving this intensity, and what should the public know about prevention and symptom management?

Let’s break down what makes this flu season so severe and what it means for your health.

A Season Like No Other: What Makes 2025 Different?

In most years, flu activity in the U.S. typically follows a predictable pattern, starting in October, peaking between December and February, and fading by April. But the 2024–2025 season has defied that rhythm.

Cases surged past the national baseline in December and then, unexpectedly, peaked again in February, a second wave that blindsided doctors and public health experts.

As of March 2025, the CDC had reported an estimated 37 million influenza infections, 480,000 hospitalizations, and 21,000 deaths. Hospitalizations, in fact, reached their highest levels in 15 years.

One key driver? A mismatch between circulating flu strains and this year’s vaccine. The dominant strains: H1N1 and H3N2, accounted for more than 99% of cases.

H3N2, in particular, is known for mutating quickly and evading immune responses, and only about half of circulating H3N2 samples matched well with vaccine antibodies, according to CDC surveillance data.

Post-Pandemic Immune Gap

Another reason this year’s flu is hitting so hard: our immune systems are still catching up.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, widespread masking, social distancing, and school closures suppressed not just SARS-CoV-2 but also seasonal flu and other common respiratory viruses. While that helped in the short term, it reduced community-level immunity over time, especially among children, who typically build natural resistance through repeated exposures.

“Young children who were toddlers or preschoolers during the pandemic missed early exposures to flu viruses,” explained experts at the nonprofit group Families Fighting Flu. “Now they’re in school, more socially active, and more vulnerable.”

The CDC reported a troubling spike in pediatric flu deaths this season with 216 fatalities, making it the deadliest flu season for children outside of a pandemic year. Neurological complications such as seizures and hallucinations also rose among young patients.

A Shift in Viral Dominance

Another unusual trend: COVID-19 has taken a back seat this winter

Unlike previous years when COVID-19 variants dominated respiratory illness charts, flu has surged ahead as the top driver of doctor visits and hospitalizations. This could be due to a shift in viral dominance, changing weather patterns, or differences in immunity buildup. According to the CDC, nearly 8% of all outpatient visits are currently for flu-like symptoms, much higher than what’s typical for this time of year.

Vaccine Fatigue and Gaps in Coverage

Vaccination remains the strongest tool we have to fight influenza, but uptake has been stagnant, or worse, declining, in key groups.

As of April 2025:

• Only 49.2% of children and 46.7% of adults had received the flu vaccine
• Among pregnant women, that number dropped to 38%
• Medicare beneficiaries aged 65+ had just 48.3% coverage
• And overall, nearly 9.2 million fewer doses were administered compared to the pre-pandemic 2019–2020 season

Barriers like vaccine hesitancy, misinformation, racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare access, and fewer flu shot clinics in rural areas continue to widen the gap.

What Are the Symptoms in 2025?

The 2025 flu has shown typical but often more intense symptoms than in previous years. Here’s what to look out for:

• Sudden onset fever
• Severe body aches and chills
• Sore throat and persistent cough
• Nasal congestion
• Diarrhea and vomiting (more frequent in children)
• Extreme fatigue
• Headache
• In some children, neurological symptoms like confusion or seizures

These symptoms may overlap with COVID-19 or RSV, but tend to come on faster and hit harder in flu cases this season.

How Long Do Symptoms Last?

For most healthy people, flu symptoms begin 1 to 4 days after exposure and typically last about 5 to 7 days. However, fatigue and cough may linger for up to two weeks.

You’re considered most contagious in the first 3 to 4 days after symptoms start but can continue to spread the virus up to a week later. The CDC recommends staying home until you’ve been fever-free for at least 24 hours without medication.

Vaccinated individuals may experience milder or shorter symptoms, but those with underlying conditions, young children, and older adults may have longer recoveries and higher risk of complications.

Can the Flu Cause Serious Health Problems?

Yes, especially in people with weakened immune systems, chronic illnesses, or no prior flu immunity.

Possible complications include:

• Pneumonia
• Ear and sinus infections
• Exacerbation of asthma or heart disease
• Life-threatening conditions requiring ICU care

This is why experts stress that prevention remains the best medicine.

How to Protect Yourself and Your Family

Here’s how to lower your risk during the remainder of the 2025 season:

• Get vaccinated, even now. It may still protect against circulating strains
• Wash your hands often with soap and water
• Avoid touching your face in public settings
• Cover your mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing
• Stay home if you’re unwell to prevent spreading the virus

Imagine stubbing your toe and feeling like it's been set on fire... for months. Now imagine that burning sensation spreading to your entire leg, and instead of easing over time, it gets worse. That’s Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). It is a condition as problematic as its name suggests and yet, bizarrely, not talked about enough.

Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome is a long-term, often debilitating condition that typically affects a limb like an arm, hand, leg, or foot after an injury, surgery, stroke, or even something as mundane as a sprain. It’s like your nervous system gets stuck in panic mode.

There are two types:

Type 1 (Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy): Happens without a confirmed nerve injury.

Type 2 (Causalgia): Involves a definite nerve injury.

Regardless of type, the result is the same: persistent, severe pain way out of proportion to the initial injury, often with odd side effects.

Why CRPS Is No Ordinary Ache

If pain had a reality show, CRPS would be the melodramatic diva. The pain can feel like burning, stabbing, throbbing, or shooting. It’s often accompanied by:

• Swelling
• Changes in skin colour or temperature (hot and red one minute, cold and blue the next)
• Excessive sweating
• Hair and nail changes
• Muscle weakness and spasms

It can also cause allodynia, which is a fancy term for when even a gentle breeze or the touch of fabric feels like torture.

Worst of all? The pain doesn’t stay neatly in one place. It may start in a toe and sneakily creep up the leg or even jump to the other side of the body.

Why It Happens

Ask ten doctors what causes CRPS, and you might get eleven guesses. The exact cause isn’t fully understood, but it seems to involve:

• A malfunction in the peripheral and central nervous systems
• Abnormal inflammatory responses
• Dysfunction of blood vessels and pain pathways
• It’s the body’s overreaction to trauma, like a car alarm blaring long after the bump is gone.

Life with CRPS

Chronic pain doesn’t just hurt the body; it impacts daily life. CRPS affects every layer of existence:

• Mental health: Anxiety, depression, and even PTSD-like symptoms are common.
• Mobility: Limited range of motion and muscle weakness may lead to reliance on walking aids or wheelchairs.
• Sleep: Pain that flares up at night makes good sleep feel like a luxury.
• Work and relationships: Jobs may be lost, plans cancelled, social life drained.

What adds to the distress? Many people with CRPS report feeling disbelieved, even by medical professionals. It’s an invisible illness with painfully visible consequences.

How Do You Treat It?

There’s no one-size-fits-all cure, but the goal is to reduce symptoms and improve quality of life. Treatment is usually multi-pronged:

• Medications: Pain relievers, nerve-blockers, antidepressants, anticonvulsants
• Physical therapy: To restore mobility and function
• Occupational therapy: To adapt daily tasks
• Psychological support: Pain management techniques like CBT and mindfulness
• Interventional approaches: Nerve blocks, spinal cord stimulation, or ketamine infusions in severe cases

Early diagnosis is key. The longer CRPS goes untreated, the more entrenched and resistant it becomes.

CRPS Is Real, Rare, and Relentless

Though CRPS is considered rare, with estimates suggesting around 5 to 26 cases per 100,000 people annually, it’s devastating for those who live with it. It often shows up uninvited, stays far too long, and brings along a suitcase full of complications.

But awareness is growing. Support groups, research into new treatments, and advocacy efforts are helping give a voice to people who’ve lived in silence. With the right treatment plan, support system, and a dash of stubborn hope, many people find ways to live well despite the pain.

We have all had that mini meltdown finding a clump of hair in the shower drain or a brush full of hair after combing hair. While blaming stress or the changing seasons feels comforting, experts warn that your body might be sounding a nutritional alarm. Yes, your hair loss might be less about the weather and more about what is missing from your plate.

Listen to What Your Body’s Saying

“Seeing a lot of hair strands on your pillow cover feels distressing,” says Dr Khushboo Jha, MBBS, MD, Chief Dermatologist Consultant at Metro Hospital and Founder of One Skin Clinic, Faridabad, “but you need to listen to your body. It’s the way it communicates that your body is struggling with some deeper concern, probably nutrient deficiency.”

Hair, it turns out, is a high-maintenance tissue. It’s fast-growing and metabolically active, demanding a steady supply of nutrients. But it’s not considered essential for survival. So in times of nutritional crisis, your body reroutes vitamins and minerals to more important organs like your heart or brain, leaving your hair stranded without support.

“If your diet is insufficient, especially lagging in iron, vitamin D, Vitamin B complex such as vitamin B12 and biotin, zinc, protein, etc., hair will be the first one to suffer,” says Dr Jha.

Why Vegans, Crash Dieters, and IBS Patients Should Pay Extra Attention

Dr Ameesha Mahajan, Cosmetic Dermatologist and Founder of Eden Skin Clinic, agrees. “Vegetarians or vegans are more prone to deficiencies, especially when it comes to vitamin B12, iron and protein deficiency,” she says. And it’s not just about what you eat, but also how well your body absorbs it. “Impaired gut absorption disorders such as coeliac disease or IBD… can lead to extreme hair thinning,” Dr Mahajan adds.

Crash diets and eating disorders like bulimia nervosa don’t do your strands any favours either. These behaviours disrupt the body’s nutritional balance and can prematurely push hair into the shedding phase.

The Medical Jargon You Didn’t Know You Needed: Telogen Effluvium

One particular fallout of nutrient shortfalls is telogen effluvium, a name for hair falling out sooner than it should. Dr Mahajan points to iron deficiency anaemia as a common trigger. “It is strongly associated with telogen effluvium, a condition where hair prematurely enters the shedding phase,” she explains.

In other words, if you’ve been feeling unusually tired and your hair is thinning, it might be more than a coincidence; it could be low iron or another nutrient throwing your hair growth cycle off track.

Don’t Pop Just Any Pill

Before you go on a supplement shopping spree, both experts urge caution. “Before self-prescribing supplements, experts urge a full nutritional workup to identify what’s missing,” says Dr Jha. Overloading on certain vitamins can do more harm than good.

Dr Mahajan agrees. “It’s best to get blood parameters checked for any nutrient deficiencies before beginning any supplement to be sure.”

So yes, multivitamins are tempting but flying blind could backfire. Know what you’re low on before topping up.

Eat for Your Hair: What to Load on Your Plate

Both dermatologists suggest nourishing your scalp from within. Dr Jha recommends “a diet loaded with whole grains, legumes, millets, dairy products, nuts, seeds, etc.,” noting these support not only hair health but also overall wellbeing.

Dr Mahajan says that these foods “help to restore the lost nutrients, making the hair denser and thicker.” Think of them as edible armour for your follicles.

Still Losing Hair? Time to Dig Deeper

If your hair continues to vanish despite eating all the right things, don’t ignore it. “If still you face symptoms, consult a dermatologist for ruling out hormonal or other health conditions,” advises Dr Jha.

Dr Mahajan adds, “If you still suffer from hair fall, despite making changes in your diet, it’s time to consult a dermatologist, as it might be due to some hormonal disruption or any other autoimmune-related cause.” Because sometimes, hair loss isn’t just about what’s missing but what’s going wrong beneath the surface.

Heart disease remains one of the leading causes of death globally, and while technology has evolved to the point where predicting heart attacks is possible, the medical world still struggles to put this into practice. Experts point to both promise and pitfalls in predictive cardiology, revealing why such life-saving tech is not yet a mainstream reality.

The Tech Is Here, But We Are Not Using It Enough

Dr. Vikrant B. Khese, Cardiologist at Jehangir Hospital, Pune, says the idea that we can predict heart attacks before they happen is both “exciting and frustrating, because while the technology exists, its real-world implementation remains limited.”

He explains that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have incredible potential in this field. These tools can analyse vast datasets, such as blood pressure, lipid profiles, ECGs, imaging, and even genetic markers, to uncover patterns that might be invisible to the human eye. “These tools can detect subtle risk factors that may be missed in routine clinical practice. However, several challenges continue to hold us back,” he says.

One of the biggest concerns is the source of the data feeding these algorithms. “The majority of AI models are trained on Western datasets that do not reflect the unique genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors of Indian or Asian populations. This creates a mismatch, resulting in lower accuracy and reliability for non-Western patients.”

Dr. Khese adds that cardiovascular disease is deeply multifactorial. It is not just about clinical metrics. “Stress, socioeconomic status, cultural diet patterns, air pollution, and unstructured physical activity all influence risk but are difficult to quantify in a dataset. AI still struggles with these intangible but crucial variables.”

And even when predictive tools are developed, another hurdle lies in the healthcare system’s ability to use them. “Data-driven predictions can only be as good as the data input. In India, inconsistent electronic medical records, underreporting, and fragmented healthcare systems make it harder to gather high-quality longitudinal data, limiting the AI's learning potential.”

Crucially, there is also a behavioural gap. “Even when prediction tools exist, they are not routinely used by clinicians due to scepticism, lack of training, or workflow disruption. Bridging the gap between innovation and implementation is a major hurdle.”

According to Dr. Khese, technology must complement clinical judgement, not replace it. “AI is a powerful tool but not a standalone solution. Until we combine high-quality, representative data with clinical wisdom and system-level integration, the promise of predicting heart attacks before they happen will remain underutilised. The future lies in synergy; technology must empower doctors, not replace them.”

Prediction Tools Exist—But We’re Waiting for Symptoms

Dr. Vijay D'Silva, Medical Director of White Lotus International Hospital and Clinical Advisor and Mentor of Heartnet India, backs this view and draws attention to major international trials. “Research from the University of Oxford has suggested that a global trial of an AI tool that can predict the 10-year risk of heart attack has shown that in about 45 per cent of patients with chest pain, treatment could be improved,” he shares.

“Early detection of cardiac risk allows timely treatment and monitoring that can help reduce the mortality rate,” he says, explaining that most coronary blockages are asymptomatic. “Some present with chest, arm or jaw pain on exertion (angina pectoris). Few present as a heart attack or sudden death. People seek treatment after a heart attack when the damage is already done.”

According to Dr. D’silva, “With the help of the right tools, it is now possible to predict a heart attack before it occurs.” Among these tools are blood tests, ECGs, and advanced risk calculators such as the AHA PREVENT calculator, ASCVD Risk Calculator Plus, QRISK3, and SCORE2.

He points out how the 2023 AHA PREVENT calculator estimates 10-year cardiovascular risk in individuals aged 30 to 79, and 30-year risk in adults aged 30 to 59. “Early-stage detection of CVD minimises the cost and also reduces the CVD mortality rate,” he says.

This tool divides patients into four risk categories, each with its own treatment strategy:

• Low risk (<5%): Maintain healthy lifestyles and reassess every five years.
• Borderline risk (5–7.4%): Lifestyle changes and monitoring of risk-enhancing factors like BP, sugar, weight and lipids. CAC scoring can further stratify risk. Annual reassessment recommended.
• Intermediate risk (7.5–19.9%): Calls for lifestyle management, preventive medication (statins or aspirin), stress testing and CT coronary angiogram. Yearly reassessment is needed.
• High risk (≥20%): Requires intensive lifestyle changes, pharmacotherapy, imaging and close follow-up.

Despite these advances, Dr D'Silva says, “The gap lies in implementation. Most people still wait for the symptoms to appear before seeing a doctor. Heart attacks, unfortunately, strike without any warning, especially in women and younger patients, where symptoms can be atypical.”

He stresses that predictive cardiology is not yet standard in clinical practice. “People who are at risk seek care when symptoms arise. But in cardiology, symptoms often come too late. Up to 50 per cent of heart attack victims had no prior warning signs.”

Why Risk Calculators Are NotFoolproof

• Patients with LDL cholesterol ≥190 mg/dL
• Those with familial hypercholesterolemia
• Patients with type 1 diabetes
• People with other risk-enhancing factors like family history of early cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, chronic kidney disease, chronic inflammatory diseases (psoriasis, RA, lupus), or early menopause

The Way Forward

Dr. D'silva concludes, “The ability to predict heart attacks is advancing continuously, but we need public awareness and equitable access to make predictive cardiology more standard.”

In short, we can predict heart att but until we normalise risk screening, improve data systems, and bridge the clinical gap, too many heart attacks will continue to catch people and systems off guard.