Symptom facts for kids

A symptom is something a person feels or notices when they are unwell. It's a clue that helps doctors figure out what might be wrong. Symptoms are very important for understanding what is happening inside your body.

What Are Symptoms?

In medicine, a symptom is a feeling or change that only the patient can experience. For example, if you have a headache, only you can feel that pain. Doctors use these clues to help them understand your health.

Symptoms vs. Signs

It's helpful to know the difference between a symptom and a sign:

• A symptom is something you feel or notice. It is subjective, meaning it's based on your personal experience.
• A sign is something a doctor or another person can see or measure. It is objective, meaning it can be observed by anyone.

Examples of Symptoms and Signs

Let's look at some examples to make this clearer:

• If you burn your skin, the pain you feel is a symptom. The red color of your skin that someone else can see is a sign.
• When you have food poisoning, feeling sick (nausea) is a symptom. Vomiting or diarrhea that others can see are signs.
• If someone has heart disease, chest pain is a symptom they feel. If their skin looks blue (called cyanosis), that's a sign a doctor can observe.
• For the influenza (flu), headaches, aching muscles, and nausea are all symptoms you would feel.

How Symptoms Help Doctors

When you visit a doctor, they will ask you about your symptoms. They might ask:

• What do you feel?
• When did it start?
• How strong is the feeling?
• Does anything make it better or worse?

The doctor also looks for signs by examining you. They might check your temperature, listen to your heart, or look at your skin. By putting all the symptoms and signs together, the doctor can form a hypothesis (an educated guess) about what might be causing your illness. This helps them decide what tests to do next or what treatment you might need.

Understanding symptoms is the first step in figuring out how to help you feel better.

See also

In Spanish: Signo clínico para niños