ELi5 if viruses cant survive in high temperatures, why do we try to lower our temperature when we have a fever?
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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.
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