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
It’s degrees. At a minor level, a lot of symptoms of illness are obnoxious or prevent us from living our daily lives. There’s definitely a cultural element there, especially in the U. S., that we don’t have time to be sick.
The more extreme bit is that the body isn’t necessarily the best judge of what to do. With some viruses for example, it’s not the virus that’ll kill you, it’s your body’s response to it that goes overboard in trying to kill the virus. You’d think maybe that the body would know better than to increase your internal temperature above 103 degrees, but no, it will kill you to kill a virus. Your individual systems don’t necessarily work in concert, and will do things like flush your bowels, which in some cases is the right thing to do to get something out of your guts, but could also kill you via dehydration, for example.
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