Suffering the last few days with a flu/cold type thing, I went to bed and woke up at 2 am and was very hot. I took my temperature and it read 102 so I went for some fluids and some ibuprofen (well, that’s what I had). After about an hour, I took my temperature again and it was down to about 100. And then about 2 hours later, I woke up feeling a little cold and took my temperature and I was back to normal and that seems to have held.
But in a lot of movies, you see someone with a fever and they are depicted babbling incoherently or squirming around and then they suddenly cry out and the fever is gone and everything is back to normal?
So, what process is it in the human body that causes a fever to stop?
That’s the movies. When your fever is going up, you might chill and shiver. Your skin will feel dry to touch and might be sensitive.
When the fever comes down again, whether because of antipyretics or because the illness has run its course, you’ll often feel sweaty, with a very high fever you may drench the bed.
Adults don’t have seizures from high fevers, but children can. Because their temperature regulating center is new, it works better. A child’s fever can shoot up from 98.6° to 105° in 20 minutes. The brain doesn’t like that, and reacts poorly. A fever of 104° is rare in an adult, and it takes longer to reach its peak.
(Now, adults can have seizures from an illness with an associated fever, but not from the fever itself)
Some people do become disoriented with high fever. But, the tying-in-bed, scaring-the-neighbors kind of fever fugue, you’ve seen in the movies, is reserved for things like malaria, and ebola.
Well I did have weird dreams and trouble sleeping when I had the fever. I never could sleep for a long period of time. After the fever ended (and I’ve been normal all day), I slept normally, albeit from 4 to 10:30 am, which made me feel glad that I wasn’t due in until 11 at work, so I could still call in to tell them that I wasn’t going to make it.
I’m also glad to know that I didn’t have ebola or malaria. For a while I thought I had meningitis, but I then I realized I just had a headache from sleeping funny and getting a sore neck.
The whole point of a fever is that your body is attempting to kill the dangerous infection, which, your body has deduced, lives comfortably at your normal body temperature. Of course, raising your body temperature has the adverse effect of screwing up your own body’s natural functions. If you manage to kill the infection without killing yourself, then the strategy succeeds.
So if the fever is designed to kill off an infection do you delay your return to health by reducing the fever? I’m assuming that you don’t or else doctors wouldn’t be telling you how to lower fevers and keep yourself hydrated.
Well, not exactly. The fever is a side effect of your body mobilizing its defenses. Your normal complement of T-lymphocytes are the first defenders to recognize the intruder. They alert their headquarters of the invader, causing a dramatic increase in the manufacture of their comrades who are responsible for making antibodies. They also alert the bone marrow which starts recruiting white blood cells, who do the hand to hand combat. Your brain and pituitary also have extra duty. All of these things occurring raises your heart and respiratory rates. Catacholimine levels skyrocket, as well as both blood sugar and insulin levels. All of this activity leads to increased temperature. All these defenses working in concert kill off the bacteria or virus, Of course, if it is a bacteria, the army often can’t quite cope, then The chemical weapons (antibiotics) have to be trucked in via the doctor’s office.
Fever may make the interior environment less inviting for the little buggers, but for the most part, bacteria and viruses can live within the same temperature range we can.
The only instance where temperature makes a difference is in the nose. When you have a head cold, one study showed a difference in length of symptoms when the patients breathed steam for 20-30 minutes 4-6 times per day.
I agree that some bacteria can easially and quiclky get out of hand, but wouldn’t that me the minority of them? Aren’t we constantly exposed to bacteria every day? I think in the last 2 years I have had time where I have to take antibiotics, actually it was recommended to prevent the chance of infection. It seems to me it is far from often.
Yes, indeed. Your immune system is on constant alert for any bacteria getting out of control. When I speak of “bacteria” I should be saying pathogens, which are bacteria that make us sick. Some the most well known are Streptococcus aureus, Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli 0157:H7. E.coli needs some ‘splainin’ though. The 0157:H7 indicates the pathogen. We have a different strain of E.coli in our own intestines, that we need to help break down waste.
Strep. a is one of the organisms that the media named “flesh-eating bacteria” it also causes “Strep throat.” Staph has many strains that can cause minor and major illnesses. It has been escalating its resistance to antibiotics for years.
Healthy individuals do tend to get viral illnesses more often than bacterial, but bacterial illness does happen. People with compromised immune systems are fair game for almost anything. In other words, any bacteria can be a pathogen under the right (or wrong) circumstances.
The reason I mentioned both viruses and bacteria when I explained fever, is because bacterial illness will often generate higher fever than viruses. There are exceptions, but I can’t think of one off hand.
Just to muddy the waters a bit more, systemic fungal infections cause even higher temperatures than either of the other groups. Don’t worry, it’s nearly impossibe for a healthy immune system to allow systemic over growth of fungus.
Getting back to the OP: I’m of the impression that in the pre-antibiotic days a person with a serious infection might well go through the process depicted in the movies. That is, at some point their immune system finally starts to have some success against the pathogen, and start to level off, and that the fever would suddenly abate. Either that, or it doesn’t, and they die?
That’s basicly, it. Pre-antibiotics, people died from things as simple as an infected cut, and, yes, their immune system could easily become so overwhelmed with infection they might spike a very high fever with chills and disorientation. The one thing with the movie fevers is the sick person is always covered with sweat, just opposite of what really happens.
Well, my fever went away without any antibiotics. Just fluids and ibuprofen. I assume that after about 5 days, my body had fought it off the bug to a draw.
I’m down just to a cough. And when I return to work tomorrow I will be able to engender sympathy, which is all I seek aside from good health.
How DOES the body break a fever on it’s own (without benefit of drugs)?