– why do you feel cold when you have a fever.
In: Biology
Normally, when an area of skin is touching something and is giving away its heat energy because its warmer than that thing it’s touching, we sense cold or coolness from that thing or from within ourselves. The bigger the temperature difference the faster the heat gets transfered and the faster the transfer the colder we feel. When have a fever, we are warmer than normal and the temperature difference between our skin and what it’s touching (the air) is also larger than normal. This makes us sense that we are colder than normal despite actually being pretty warm.
A lot of these kind of sensations happen more in your mind than in your body.
When you have a fever, your body’s turned its internal thermostat up. When that happens, you’re now significantly colder than what your body wants to be–and that shows up as a feeling of cold. That’s why you can still get chills even when you’re wrapped in warm blankets.
The reverse is also true; when your fever breaks, your body turns its internal thermostat back down, and suddenly you’re much hotter than your body wants to be. That’s why you can take an advil or something and immediately sweat out half a gallon of sweat, as your body tries to return you to normal temperature.
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