I have influenza A right now. My muscles are SO sore, every touch hurts, and cold is actually painful right now. What about illness actually causes this type of sensitivity to sensation?
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There are probably other factors too, but one is to do with inflammation. When you’re sick, your body produces inflammatory molecules which signal for more white blood cells to come and deal with the sickness molecules. The same reaction would also happen if you got injured, and because an injury happens at a particular location in the body, the inflammation is localised to that area, so you experience the pain, swelling, redness etc in that area. When you’re sick, the sickness might be mainly in a certain area but ultimately spreads around your bloodstream all over the body. This means that the inflammation that is trying to deal with it also spreads all over the body and therefore affects the nerves, muscles and organs all over. Your nerves become sensitised and experience normal stimuli more intensely.
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