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

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.