If the body raises its temperature to kill bacteria, why is it bad to take a hot shower when you have a fever?
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To put a bit simple:
body raises temperature to kill it, buuuut our bodies are also not fully functional at those temperatures.
It’s like using a Grenade to kill a spider: you know it will probably work, but you will also damage the whole place.
Since fever can be dangerous for our body, hot shower is a risk of even more temperature that your body cant handle.
TL;DR: Fever will kill the problem AND the body along way, hot shower will help fever kill the second part in some way
It depends what you mean by raises its temperature to kill bacteria.
If you mean a raised body temp is high enough to kill the bacteria then no, that’s not what it is doing.
The raise in body temperature is to give a boost to the immune system which works better at a higher than normal body temp. and it is this which then kills the bacteria. So the killing of bacteria with a raised body temp. is a more indirect method of killing bacteria.
However, I can’t remember ever being told by a doctor to not take a hot shower when I have been sick. In fact, the opposite is true. The old remedy of cold baths or showers to treat a fever is not recommended.
Your immune system works better at higher temperatures, but nothing else in your body does. It’s why when you overheat you feel terrible.
I don’t know how much showers effect your body temp, I just feel like my skin is extra sensitive during a fever so I don’t like to be in showers for long.
It’s not bad to take a hot shower during a fever, it’s just uncomfortable. At the same time, taking a cold shower is not recommended because as your skin (periphery) cools down due to cold water, the body tries to compensate by increasing your core (inside) temperature which we don’t want in a patient already suffering from fever. Hence lukewarm water is the best for this situation.
Now there are chemical compounds called pyrogens (molecules that cause fever). Usually the process goes like this : bacteria/virus/microorganisms enter our body, body/immune system detects certain proteins and chemical structures on them (like the cell wall,etc), sends a signal to the brain, brain is like oops need to kill that, need more ammo, so they release some other substances/chemical compounds which further activates the immune system.
Now both the microorganisms and the brain/immune system’s compounds are what we call pyrogens.
So exogenous ( from outside) pyrogens like bacteria give rise to endogenous (from inside the body) pyrogens like the immune system cells which increases the body temperature level just the way you adjust the thermostat to a higher setting.
Hope this helps. Feel free to ask any questions 🙂
Edit : Thanks for all the upvotes and awards, science is great, I love it
You can get too hot and pass out.
A former colleague of a friend died because he was drunk, got a super hot shower and passed out. He was found dead and half cooked the next day…
Ok now back to the topic, when you have a fever that thing will kill bacteria effectively up to 38C, at 39C it kills more bacteria but your brain start malfunctioning, at 40C your brain may get permanent damage.
Because having a fever puts the body on the border line, you must be careful not shift your temperature out of limit. Reducing fever too much will help the infection and increasing it may kill you. Sudden temperature change up or down may shock your circulatory system and make you pass out.
In simple terms it’s not as much as a bad idea to take a hot shower, but a bad idea to do anything that raises body temperature. Humans have a pretty narrow temperature range they can handle body temp wise. Blankets or hot showers raise your body temp and can cause permanent brain damage.
I have a cousin where this happened. She said she was cold, her dad put blankets on her, and her brain overheated and she’s now mentally challenged. She’s in her 40’s and will never be able to live alone or without constant supervision.
You don’t want to get too hot or you can damage organs and or have other negative effects. Which is why if a fever goes too high they will try to bring it down. In Small children/infants it can cause seizures. That being said, most average people won’t have any issues with a hot shower when sick. It might even do them some good.
As others have noted, our immune system actually works better at elevated temperatures while bacteria and viruses are slowed. This is due to the proteins that make up cells being tuned for a specific temperature. As the temperature rises it changes the shape of the proteins and thus they have a harder time doing what they want/need to do. Think of a bimetallic strip in a circuit breaker except proteins are like a thousand bimetallic strips arranged like origami.
It’s one reason you feel like garbage when you’re running a fever and why you don’t want to go too far out of range. Germs are tuned for the same temperature that their intended hosts run at because that’s when they will be most efficient. Our immune system, by contrast, is tuned to be most efficient at slightly elevated temperatures. Therefore as temps rise, germs starts to lose their shape and with that, their ability to operate effectively. At the same time our immune cells actually reach their optimal shape and become even more efficient. It’s a last ditch double whammy to save your life from a raging infection.
The advice on dealing with fevers changes constantly.
Bacteria and virus that attack humans have evolved to reproduce fastest as a normal human body temperature. A fever takes the body outside the normal range to reduce a virus/baterias rate of growth making it easier to kill off the infection.
A fever generally makes someone uncomfortable. A prolonged or too high a fever can be harmful to a person as it can cause the body to shut down. Because of this sometimes the medical advice is to bring down the body temperature to reduce the fever to make the person more comfortable and prevent the fever causing harm to the body. (taking paracetomol, cold shower, ice bath, etc…).
Other medical advice might say to aid your body making the fever, wrap up well and help raise your body temp. This may be given on the short term only for milder fevers.
In general the advice is to stay comfortable.
The advice on hot showers has absolutely nothing to do with the fever itself. A fever is normally accompanied by weakness, partularly as your body is burning extra energy. The fear with a hot shower is that you faint, which can lead to injury from falling, drowning in a shallow pool of water, or other issue.
How about not showering when you have a fever?
For the last 20+ years when I have had a bad fever I always have a hot shower. I sit either on a plastic stool or on the floor resting my head on the cold tiles. This has helped me sleep and break the fever much faster. It almost always gets rid of the muscle aches, allowing me to sleep. Resting my head on the tiles is like a cold pack keeping my head cool while my body warms.
It works for me and I haven’t had any negative side effects that I’m aware of except a guilty conscious for using so much water.
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