Hello everyone!
So as I understand it, your body starts to heat up to slow down the reproduction of bacteria in your body, thus resulting in a fever.
But how come that you can die of a fever? Does the body not know when to stop heating up?
In: 14
Your body *is* being damaged (or is at least running inefficiently) during a fever. The fever temperature is not a “safe” temperature for the body; your body is gambling that the microbe/virus/bacteria will be defeated before the body takes too much damage. Hence, if the illness is too severe, your body will lose the race, so to speak, and you will die before the illness is overcome. However, in many cases, the illness can be defeated before the body suffers too much, allowing the body to come down from the fever and start working on healing the damage.
So it’s not so much that your body is causing a fever to slow down the reproduction of bacteria, it’s heating up because the immune system works better at a higher than normal body temperature.
The body doesn’t know anything. It reacts to stimuli. If the stimuli that causes a rise in body temperature continues then it’ll continue to do that whether it’s good or bad for you.
The system has evolved because it works better than nothing. It doesn’t mean it evolved because it always works.
The body is not designed very cleverly at all. It may look like everything was planned there from the start but in reality it is all held together with ducktape and hope. Some sort of safety stop for your fever for example is not something which have been developed. There may have been some simple mechanisms in place which could have been developed into a working system but more then likely these ended up not letting the body get high enough of a temperature or let the fever get too high anyway and therefore people with those genes died out faster.
This is a topic of active research. There is evidence to show that our body is more capable of managing fever than we give it credit, and “you’ll get brain damage” is a bit overstated. Your body is not trying to kill you, it’s actually remarkably good at saving you and self regulating.
Here is a good jumping off point if you want to jump in further. Not eli5, but not a difficult read. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002962921000045
So, if the body is supposed to increase fever to fight off bacteria- then shouldn’t we let a fever get to 102 or something like that, before taking Tylenol or aspirin ??
These answers are mostly incorrect. Our bodies are incapable of creating a temperature that is lethal to us. When patients die related to infection, it is usually from a condition called ‘sepsis’ in which a state of inflammation causing collateral damage exists. Sepsis can result in organ injury, activation of clotting in small blood vessels, and death.
The Surviving Sepsis campaign aims to treat potential sepsis earlier by recognition of its symptoms:
– Elevated heart rate
– Increased respiratory rate
– Elevated white blood cell count
– Fever
Any two of four of these symptoms combined with a source of infection is sepsis until proved otherwise.
Not all patient who met criteria will have sepsis, but the diagnostic role reduces the risk of missing a case of sepsis.
Fever is one of the symptoms of sepsis. Controlling fever does not reduce mortality. Early use of antibiotics is the most important action in treating bacterial sepsis.
We have to debunk fever misinformation frequently in the ER. Many people rush their fully immunized children to the ER with runny noses because of concern the tylenol “isn’t working”. We screen them for treatable conditions and sepsis risk and reassure the vast majority.
BTW – the risk of sepsis in children has been incredibly reduced by vaccinations, particularly the H flu and pneumococcal vaccines!
I hope this helps.
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