Why can your body raise your temperature to deadly heights when having a fever?

Question

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

Answer 1

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