I’m sick rn and I’ve taken medication to reduce my fever. But isn’t a fever your body trying to cook out the infection? Ofc it could cook me as well, but if my fever goes away then won’t that just aid the germs?
In: Biology
Just from a nurse perspectives, our bodies love to overcompensate with things and that overcompensation can lead to other things going out of wack
Just from a nurse perspectives, our bodies love to overcompensate with things and that overcompensation can lead to other things going out of wack
Coughing is good in certain amounts while sick, it eliminates pathogens from the lungs. But if you’re coughing up a lung, that can result in rib strains, broken ribs, etc. (ask me how I know, flu A gave me lasting rib strain in 2020 and it still hurts to breathe). So we give cough suppressants. Fever is good, it helps cook the pathogens. But if it gets too high your body’s proteins can’t function. If it gets dangerously high, we take fever reducers (edit: fever is fine but once it starts going above 103 you should probably take a fever reducer, but not before that, fever is good for fighting illness). An active immune system is good, but if your throat starts closing because it’s overactive then we take something to reduce its activity. A working body is about balance. And balance can be lost really easily when you’re sick.
It’s just a balance. If your fever is low, let it roll! But if it’s high, you’re getting dehydrated and you might even, as you say, be cooked (or get brain damage). Similar to coughing. It’s good to get things out, but if the coughing is keeping you awake all night, you need your sleep to recover.
These items are probably* our evolved defense to this stuff. But, they’re really unpleasant. As basically healthy individuals in the modern world, a cold is unlikely to kill us. So you can lean on your body’s defenses and be miserable for 5 days, or you can take some medicine to feel less miserable and be better in 6 or 7.
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*I don’t know of a study validating it, but I’ve always wondered if coughing *is* our body’s defense, here. Viruses are known to sometimes engineer changes in their hosts’ behavior. When you cough, you’re probably near your family – with whom you share a lot of genes. Your genes would probably prefer not to expose them to something dangerous versus taking a fairly small risk to yourself. Yet, we cough and spray these particles *everywhere*. I suspect “coughing is the body’s defense” is too simple, and the virus is actively trying to make us cough. Fever though for sure is our body’s response, and diseases *hate* this one weird trick!
Your body is fighting the infection in other ways. Taking medicine doesn’t suppress your immune system, which is doing the real heavy lifting in fighting the infection. The symptoms of an illness typically are unpleasant and aren’t strictly necessary to experience in order to get better.
One reason is because it just doesn’t feel good to feel sick. We don’t like fevers and headaches and coughing so we take what’s available to reduce the symptoms.
As someone who gets sick a lot and asked a few of my doctors
The body just overcompensates. A lot. The body does not necessarily know that it’s in the world of great medicine and has one objective: survive. It just does this kinda stupidly.
It does the equivalent of finding a spider in your house and lighting the entire house on fire. Does it work? yeah.. But was it overkill? yeah.
Depending on the symptoms it’s better to just let it kinda do it’s thing unless it’s getting really bad, like comparing having a light fever of 101 for a day or two compared to burning up at a solid 105 degrees for a week.
Good to find a good balance, the body is still trying to do its thing, but if it’s straight trying to kill you then yeah it’s good to take something for it. Every symptom has a reason, but sometimes the symptoms start making life a lot harder.
Coughing isn’t necessarily a way to fight infection. It’s a way to spread it.
Fever can get too high and cook your brain. Bringing it down can help manage your pain.
This is a question I wonder when some of my friends run their kid to the dr for every low grade fever. The body is doing exactly as it’s supposed to.
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