Dooley Noted: 7/23/14
Yesterday morning, I awoke at 5 AM, unable to lift my head.
I had a fever.
First, I had the response trained into me: Make that fever drop.
I got up and walked to the veritable apothecary displayed in my kitchen cabinets.
Then I stopped. My limbic system reminded me that a fever is there for a reason.
I got back in bed and let that fever break itself.
It was a rough few hours. I felt awful.
But then, I felt the discomfort start to quickly dissipate. My body was breaking its own fever.
The hypothalamus has incredible capabilities of temperature regulation. When a pathogenic response is present, the body will raise it’s temperature from the comfortable standard 98 or so degrees – up to 104, without significant damage to the host.
That host is you. It wants to protect you, not to kill you. It wants to kill the pathogenic response.
Many microbes thrive at your basal body temperature. By raising body temperature to higher levels, the endocrine and immune systems are effectively providing an unfavorable environment for the microbe to thrive.
Why would we interfere with that? In effect, the fever makes the host hugely uncomfortable for a small period of time, while the problem is more efficiently resolved.
Bringing down the fever artificially can prevent a full, complete destruction of a microbe, leaving you with a longer dwelling illness.
By the evening, I was nearly back to my full self. By this morning, I felt like I could run a marathon. (I didn’t, of course.)
If the temperature is not exceeding 102 degrees, there is room to consider watchful waiting for the fever to break itself. You can have the hospital on stand-by, and never be alone (if you can help it) when you have a fever. They can rise as quickly as they can fall.
Yes, you will be hot and miserable for a few hours. But letting the system do it’s work may result in a markedly shorter illness period.
I’ll take a day off as a sick day. I won’t take a week. My system knows how to fight illness without much of my own intervention. I let my systems do their work, and today I’m back to work.
Break the fever – or, if it’s below 102.5, consider carefully watching it break itself.
As always, it’s your call.
– Dr. Kathy Dooley