AUGUSTA, Ga. - We've all been there—the body aches and pains, the sore throats and congestion and not to mention coughing up all sorts of gross stuff. You're sick and it's winter time, but what have you got? The flu or a common cold?

Doctors say it can often be tricky to tell.

"There's not much difference actually,” says MCGHealth Cold and Flu Specialist, Dr. Jim Wilde. “You can kind of think of the flu as a really severe form of a cold. In both cases, you're looking at a runny nose, cough and fever."

Dr. Wilde has been studying respiratory illnesses like the flu and the common cold for years. He says there are a few subtle, but telltale signs of which illness patients are infected with.

"Influenza more commonly causes muscle aches if you ache from head to toe, in particular, if it's the middle of the winter time with fever and cough, you've got the flu."

Dr. Wilde says almost no one catches the flu any other time but during the winter months. In fact, Georgia has only had three confirmed cases of influenza since the end of last flu season.

"Colds can happen anytime of the year,” says Dr. Wilde. “If somebody comes in with fever, cough, runny nose in the middle of the summer. I'm not even going to entertain the possibility of flu. If somebody comes in with those symptoms in the middle of the winter, the likelihood is that it is flu."

During the winter months, a typical hospital's emergency room can be swamped with as much as a 70 percent patient increase. Doctors say most of those patients with the flu and colds don't need to be going to see them at hospitals.

"Stay at home, get lots of bed rest, eat your chicken soup, get plenty of fluids, wait it out, nature will take its course and the vast majority will get better all by themselves,” says Dr. Wilde. “There's nothing that a doctor's going to do to help that infection in the vast majority of cases."

Doctors say prevention is the best cure for colds and the flu because other remedies are practically worthless.

"The best way to prevent cold and flu is to hide under a rock 50 miles from the nearest person. You can't get cold or flu if you're not around anybody with cold or flu."

Doctors don't actually expect to start seeing people infected with the flu for another couple weeks, but once the flu arrives they say it will spread faster than a fire, infecting an estimated 30 million Americans in a couple months