To save off infection, there are some things you probably know you should do: wash your hands, gets lots of sleep, be careful when you sneeze, don't rub your eyes (especially after touching your nose); eat lots of fruits and vegetables. After all, a cold virus can survive on someone's hand for a couple of hours or for several days on some materials.
Even those hand sanitizers that many people use don't kill everything. And once they're in the body, viruses are quite tough to kill - antibiotics are powerless against them and vaccines for influenza and some other viruses must be changed every year to adapt to new strains. Fortunately our immune systems can fight off many viruses, but some, like Ebola or even influenza, can be deadly. It may then surprise you to learn that something viruses are exposed to all the time visible light can be used to kill them.
Doctors are limited in the ways they can fight viruses, which is why studies like this one are so exciting. On the next page, we'll look at more ways in which scientists try to fight viruses or stop their spread altogether. Several of them use light, whether to kill viruses or as an activating agent.
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