Problem
You know that you feel lousy, but you're not sure whether you have a cold or not. Here's how to tell the difference.
l Cold: nasal congestion, scratchy throat, sneezing, coughing, blocked sinuses, slight fever.
The biggest difference between a cold and flu is that a cold isolates in your head and chest, while you feel the flu all over your body.

Cause
Although they share some common symptoms, the flu is not simply a more severe version of a cold. You 'catch' a cold when you inhale virus-containing droplets expelled by someone else or rub your eyes or nose with contaminated fingers. The virus-rhinoviruses cause about half of all common colds; coronaviruses take credit for most of the rest-latches onto a mucous membrane in your nose or eyes, or throat. To fight this invasion, your body unleashes the cold symptoms (runny nose, sneezing, cough, and the like) to get rid of the virus. Colds generally last for three to seven days.

How Serious
Colds aren't serious, but if you don't take care of your symptoms, they can both lead to more serious problems like pneumonia. Certain people are more likely to develop pneumonia from a cold, including the elderly; those with the chronic conditions like asthma, emphysema, diabetes, or heart disease; and people whose immune systems have weakened by such things as chemotherapy or by taking drugs like prednisone.
Also if your cold is accompanied by an extremely high fever (105 F) or out of ordinary symptoms, (chest pain, blood in the mucus from your nose, or if your phlegm or mucus from your nose, or if your mucus is green, brown or bloody) then of course seeing a doctor is the correct thing to do.

Solutions
Stress can lower your immune system and make you prone to colds. To combat stress, listening to music at least 20 mins will relax you. --- Steven Halpern, Ph.D., composer, researcher and author of Sound Health; The Music and Sounds That Makes Us Whole.