Comment by kryogen1c
5 hours ago
>Pain a warning signal from the body
Hard agree, same with fevers. Heat helps kill many diseases, dont blunt your body's defenses.
There are exceptions to both rules, but many people forget which part is the exception and which part is the rule.
> Hard agree, same with fevers. Heat helps kill many diseases, dont blunt your body's defenses.
Heat hot enough to kill diseases will have killed you long before. Fevers are really a pretty small temperature rise.
It does appear that fevers are an adaptive defense, but FWIW there's been basically no evidence that not taking medicine to bring down a fever will improve outcomes in practice. OTOH, evidence also shows that typical fevers won't themselves hurt you either, so they don't necessarily have to be treated.
Current medical guidance in kids and (non-pregnant) adults is to treat discomfort, usually the associated muscle aches, body chills, etc, but in general we shouldn't encourage people to suffer for no benefit. The fever isn't cleaning you out.