Making Friends With Fever: Guest Blog by Pip Waller - Author of Deeply Holistic
GUEST BLOG BY PIP WALLER, MEDICAL HERBALIST AND AUTHOR OF DEEPLY HOLISTIC - A GUIDE TO INTUITIVE SELF-CARE
Here is an excerpt from Deeply Holistic about the way fever is helpful in the body, and how suppressing it can be damaging to health.
Fever and mucus production are important first lines of defence of immunity, along with protective barriers like the skin and mucous membranes; chemical barriers including tears, earwax, and the hydrochloric acid in our stomachs; expulsive actions like coughing, sneezing, vomiting, and diarrhoea; and phagocytosis by white blood cells - the swallowing or engulfing of unwanted material by specialized white blood cells. All the entrances to the body have collections of big swallowing cells (macrophages), as do the tonsils and adenoids, gut, liver, and lungs. Regular suppression of simple immune processes can be a factor in the development of future diseases.
Many parents have observed the big developmental leaps in their young children after illness. A fever and production of copious amounts of mucus - which the fever keeps running loosely - has the effect of cleaning the system, destroying toxic build-up that could otherwise cause disease. So, taking fever-lowering-drugs at the first sign of the body getting hot interferes with our natural healing process, and can mean that an acute situation becomes ongoing - as when a cold or flu turns into a chronic mucus condition like glue-ear or sinusitis.
Fever is seriously over-treated in today’s world, including for children routinely
dosed with drugs like Tylenol (acetaminophen/paracetamol – the active ingredient in Calpol) at the slightest sign of a raised temperature. This is problematic not only because it interferes with the immune system’s functioning and can drive a disease deeper into the body by preventing the cleansing mechanism of fever from doing its job, but also because acetaminophen is a very dangerous drug.
Acetaminophen is responsible annually for over a hundred thousand calls to the US poison centres, nearly sixty thousand emergency room visits, and two and a half thousand hospitalisations. It is also responsible for nearly half of all acute liver failures in the US. Yet many young ones are given it for teething, or even just for restlessness, to make them sleep.
You Give Me Fever... by Luca Florio
Fever is misunderstood in today’s world. Understandably, fear of it developed
in times when people lacked knowledge of effective treatments. But there
are definite problems caused by the habit of suppressing every fever and not
ever allowing them to run their course. For example, there is some evidence that suppressing fever in viral diseases that need the heat to get the virus out of the body (including measles) leads to higher death rates from the disease.
Also, interestingly, there are some long-term implications: people who had high fevers in childhood from particular diseases are less likely to suffer from certain serious conditions later in life. For instance, having full-on mumps as a child (with big, swollen hamster cheeks!) makes a girl less likely to get ovarian cancer as a woman, and breast cancer is less than half as likely in those who had measles as a child. Not only that, but childhood fever has a way of clearing up chronic lingering problems - after measles, for example, young people who suffered from lung or kidney problems or chronic psoriasis are likely to be improved. It is time we recognized the power of fever-type illnesses to be a potential friend rather than a foe, and let them take their natural course except when really dangerous.
Normal fevers (between 100-104 F [37.8–40 C]) are never a problem. It is a
myth that high fever - that is, above 104 F (40 C) - is always damaging. The truth
is that only fevers as high as 108 F (42.2 C) have actually been known to cause
brain damage. However, it’s good to always seek medical help for fevers over 104 F or approaching 41 C (106 F), as this usually indicates serious infection.
Remember that fever is one of the good guys, helping to rid the body of infection. If you make the fever go away sooner (than the few days they usually last) you have NOT made the infection go away sooner - in fact, you may have stopped the body from being able to deal with it as effectively and stored up some trouble for the future.
Pip's book Deeply Holistic is available on Amazon or through your local independent bookstore.
Find out more at www.pipwaller.co.uk