If symptoms of a cold are just the body fighting the cold, what is the real harm of being sick?
In: Biology
if you don’t have an immune system and get a cold you just die. The symptoms are annoying and maybe not 1000% the most optimized, but they are very extremely effective and the death rate of colds if you have a functional immune system is basically zero.
The symptoms are both your body reacting and impacts of the disease itself.
The disease is bad because its usually doing 1 of 2 things: eating you alive or screwing you to death.
Bacteria are normally the ones eating you… or at least the nutrients inside you. In that process they expel toxins that can kill your cells. Or they are just straight up attacking your cells to eat them.
Viruses are trying to attach to your cells to inject their genetic material to hijack the cell into reproducing the virus, eventually killing the cell.
So its a good thing your immune system is doing its job while your body’s other systems try to help, or you would die pretty quickly.
The harm is that more and more of your cells get hijacked into producing more of the virus and creating necrotic flesh. Leading to inflammation and organ failure.
The attacker (bacteria or virus) would destroy your organs and you would die. The symptoms of disease are good in that they alarm you so that you can seek treatment and rest and not die.
Almost any virus is harmful because they are parasites. Viruses reproduce by entering a host cell and using its resources to copy itself, then the cell bursts open releasing more of the virus that does this again and again.
Now naturally this is bad because the virus is destroying your cells to make copies of itself.
The cold virus isn’t very good at this though. In almost all cases (except people whose immune system doesn’t work properly) we get over a cold in about 5 to 7 days.
However, there are some people with an immune system that doesn’t work well, and in those people colds are a real danger because the virus destroys their healthy cells.
So your immune system is really, really important. But that doesn’t mean that your immune system’s way of dealing with the virus is fun or nice. To speed up the production of white blood cells (that capture and contain the virus cells) your body turns up the heat! This also makes conditions unpleasant for the virus.
Unfortunately it also makes things pretty unpleasant for you when you are running a fever.
But your immune system does this for a very good reason.
The problem with the common cold is that your immune system tends to over-react a bit. It hits the big red PANIC button when actually a less severe reaction would probably do the trick. The reason for this may be buried in humanity’s distant past where a virus that looked a lot like the common cold was actually really dangerous, and so our bodies are programmed to react this way – because all the people who didn’t react this way died in the past.
So does our immune system over-react to a common cold? Yes. Is it unpleasant? Yes. Could we deal with colds with a less severe reactions? Yes. Could we deal with the cold with no reaction? No. We’d die. Because all viruses are fundamentally dangerous because they are parasites.
If your immune system doesn’t fight off the viruses/bacteria fast enough, they will multiply and overwhelm your body. If this occurs, your body will go into an all out attack mode (symptoms include a VERY high fever), which will destroy your healthy cells too. It’s essentially a last resort move by your body to get rid of invaders. Not to mention, many viruses attack your cells directly by lysing them after replication.
Every cell in our body operates at an equilibrium, with temperature being a factor. If enough cells are damaged > tissues become damaged > organs damaged/impaired > entire body systems damaged/impaired > death.
Vaccines exist to help prevent your body from being overwhelmed as the point is to make sure you have antibodies circulating/ready to fight off these invaders BEFORE you ever contract that illness. Your body always responds quicker to illnesses it contracts a second time, bc there are antibodies ready from the first time.
Regarding common colds today, there isn’t much of a harm anymore given that you are in good health. It’s a different story though for those who are immunosuppressed, young children/infants or the elderly. Their immune systems are not as robust and something as common as a cold can become life threatening for the reasons I mentioned above.
If your house is on fire, why do you call the fire department?
The water from their hoses will definitely mess up some of the stuff in your house.
You call because that is a small price to pay when the alternative is your house burning down.
In today’s modern world, there really isn’t any harm from being sick, in most cases.
We have evolved natural methods, fever, mucous, etc to slow down the growth of bacteria&viruses while our adaptive-immune system mounts up a response (typically takes 1-2 weeks).
We can afford to turn-off these unpleasant defense systems (via drugs) because we can easily pay this price. Our body is otherwise unstressed due to our modern medicine, bountiful food, and hygienic lifestyle and can easily suffer the resource drain, toxic chemicals, and cell death that bacteria& viruses cause (meanwhile, it develops adaptive immunity and eventually clears the infection).
20000+ years ago, this would not be the case. We’d constantly be 0-5 days away from starvation, using precious energy to evade predators and the elements, all while also fighting off an onslaught of invaders from abhorrent hygiene.
Without the features of sickness to slow them down, the invaders would easily consume enough energy to pose a serious threat.
The fever that can accompany illness can screw with your nervous system. Once that’s shot, you’re gone.
That’s why fevers 102+ in children and 104+ in adults are taken to the ER.
Well, the symptoms of a cold are actually the body’s way of fighting off the virus causing the cold. However, while the body fights the virus, it can also affect other parts of the body, leading to fatigue, muscle aches, and other uncomfortable symptoms. Additionally, having a weakened immune system can make you more vulnerable to other illnesses. So while the symptoms themselves aren’t harmful, being sick can take a toll on your body and make you more susceptible to other health issues.
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