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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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.
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