how does it help the body’s immune system to drink fluids when you’re sick?
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A lot of answers in here that are half-correct (I’m one month away from getting my MD).
The immune system doesn’t get helped directly by drinking fluids. There are a few reasons why we say to do that when you’re sick:
* You’re not generally eating/drinking as much or doing your normal activities when you’re feeling really sick, so it’s a lot easier to become dehydrated. This is especially true if you’re elderly (for example) and it becomes harder to care for yourself when you’re feeling bad.
* A lot of things make you lose more fluids when you’re sick. Your nose is running, if you have a fever you’re sweating more, you might be breathing faster, you may have diarrhea or vomiting. It’s important to replace these fluids.
* When you’re sick, your body is in an inflammatory state because of your immune system. One of the side effects of this is that your blood vessels dilate (open up) to let the white blood cells get to different places more easily. Because they’re opened up, this actually decreases your blood pressure (you can think of it like a bigger pipe with the same amount of water, so less “full”). This isn’t likely to cause any physical harm unless you’re really, really sick–an extreme version of this is what causes septic shock–but it can make your heart rate speed up and give you all kinds of unpleasant symptoms. Keeping well-hydrated “fills up” the blood vessels a bit more and can reduce some of these isssues.
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