What exactly makes you hot during a fever, and what is happening when a fever “breaks”? Why do you not sweat during the fever but do sweat when it breaks?

132 views

What exactly makes you hot during a fever, and what is happening when a fever “breaks”? Why do you not sweat during the fever but do sweat when it breaks?

In: 3

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

A fever is the body’s attempt to fight the infection, and not from the entity causing the issue

Anonymous 0 Comments

From my limited understanding it’s something like this:

-Your body constantly heats up, it just has a built in thermometer that tells it to cool down if it’s too hot. (For example, if the body gets above 37.5°C it should start sweating)

-During a fever, your built in thermometer changes so that it starts cooling down at a higher termperature. (So it doesn’t sweat at 37.5°C but instead only starts at 38.5°C)

-During a fever break, your body thinks it has finished killing the invaders, so it goes back to normal function (so you start sweating at anything above 37.5°C again), but your body was at 38.5°C from the fever so it cools down very fast since it’s way higher than it should be.

Anonymous 0 Comments

When you have a fever your body is using a lot more energy to produce more white blood cells and more anti-bodies. That process creates heat which is why your body temperature rises but if it stays elevated for too long it will damage parts of your body which is why you normally sweat. However you don’t sweat when you have a fever because your body doesn’t want to slow down production of white blood cells or antibodies yet. When your fever breaks your body determines that it doesn’t need to produce so many white blood cells or antibodies anymore so it will begin the process to cool itself back down to average body temperature meaning you start sweating again.