What are symptoms?

A symptom is something your body does to tell you it’s not feeling quite right.

Imagine you have a favorite toy that makes beep-beep sounds when you press the button. One day, instead of beep-beep, it just makes mumble-mumble. That’s like having a symptom, it's your toy (or body) telling you something is wrong.

Your body has lots of ways to say “I’m not okay.” Maybe you feel tired, or you have a cough, or your stomach hurts. These are all like different sounds your toy can make, each one tells you something specific about what’s going on inside.

When your body talks, you can listen and try to figure out what it needs. Sometimes it just needs rest, or a glass of water, or even some medicine. It's like helping your toy fix its mumble-mumble sound, once you know what’s wrong, you can make it better again!