ELi5 if viruses cant survive in high temperatures, why do we try to lower our temperature when we have a fever?
In: 3
Because *we* can’t survive in high temperatures either. (And it makes us feel like crap even if it’s not high enough to kill us)
So you don’t die. If your fever gets too high, you will get brain damage and eventually die. If your fever is normal range and not rising, you can technically wait it out and you’re fine. A lot of people also overmedicate when it is unnecessary, really. Well if your fever persists for a long time, that’s also a bad sign. Thought I should add that. Seek medical help if you have a long lasting but not life threatening fever
Because a high temperature helps kill the virus, but if the temperature gets *too* high, it can kill our brains and severely damage our organs. Fevers of 104 or 105 F or more seem to be the point where you’re getting brain damage and need to go to the hospital right away.
That’s why when your fever hits 100 or 101 F, you need to start really trying hard to get the fever back down.
Part of the answer are proteins.
Imagine an egg, the egg white is pretty much pure protein.
Now what happens when you expose it to high levels of heat?
The proteins lose their initial liquid properties and are locked into an inflexible state.
Why am I talking about eggs? Well, humans/or animals in general and also pretty much any other lifeform on our planet use proteins for key functions in their cells. But they can only do their job if they are in the correct state (to continue our lil eggcercise: the boiled egg won’t be able to nourish a chick anymore since it’s now solid)
Now imagine your while body is an egg, and you’re slowly being boiled alive, cos that’s what a fever does. After a time your cells won’t be able to divide properly anymore, organ functions will become harder and harder to maintain, because proteins, that are essential to keeping you going can’t be produced or maintained long enough to do their job.
As for why we have fevers then? The bacteria also runs on proteins and hopeful meets their end faster than we do in this little race to the death.
I know this isn’t entirely accurate, but feel free to point out any obvious flaws
Edit: OMFG I completely forgot the question was about a virus so I’m talking about bacteria. But the same basic idea of proteins applies. The big difference is that a virus is not alive and needs a cell host’s “cell division machinery” to multiply, but this chain is also broken, since you guessed it, proteins are also used in the cell division process.
Because we can’t survive high temperatures either. High fever can cause brain damage and even death
People are giving extreme cases here of life-threatening fever.
For most folks (particularly adults), the fever’s never going to be nearly high enough to be dangerous.
But it makes you feel awful, and your body can still beat the virus on its own without it, so you lower your temperature to feel a little bit better while still being sick.
War is a dirty business. Sometimes you fight off an invader and everything goes fine.
Otherdoms the fighting to defend the country actually ends up destroying exactly what you are trying to protect.
Your body is the same. It will fight off invaders with such an intensity that it can actually kill you. Fevers kill invaders, but if left to run wild they will also kill you. Your body is making the calculation that the invaders will die before you will, but that’s not always the case.
I see the answers explain high temperature as a reason, but not as a consequence. Let’s get into it.
Not a biology/medical specialist, some parts may be wrong.
TL;DR – heat is a byproduct of fat burning, not the general idea of healing.
Virus itself – is a cell with some RNA, that penetrates a good cell with predefined behaviours set (division, destruction, the function, etc), rewrites the cell’s DNA and causes its own (virus) replication inside of the cell. After, it goes through all the other cells in your body.
Immune system responds to that anomaly caused by virus activity and starts to produce cells with specific DNA/RNA. That cell have to be made to be both classified as an “our own cell” (otherwise would be destroyed by immune system itself as a foreign cell) and “part to complete sequence with viral part into harmless”. In result, your body produces “mobile jails with specific honey inside”. But you can’t make anything out of nowhere. Where to get materials from? You don’t eat, losing appetite during fever is ordinary thing, but still you get well after some time. So what’s the source? The answer is – fat. Organism tends to store some energy/resources in fat. This is your natural “battery”, and like your natural emergency kit “in case of something” too. With burning fat organism releases the energy and resources needed to produce immunity cells, but there’s a side product – heat. At some point it may be really excessive, so you have to take some medicine to cool down. Why it can’t be managed by organism itself? Well, it actually does, but not that effective (there should be some help involved because the burning process could be more intense and heat dissipation capability is not that great).
Hope this post made it a bit clear.
Latest Answers