A Fever May be Good for You

tap78 (sxc.hu)

IS FEVER YOUR FRIEND?

It’s funny about fevers — some people panic when their temperature is only slightly above 98.6° Fahrenheit (F), while others believe that you should let your body “sweat it out” and therefore refuse to take anything at all for a fever. As it turns out, both points of view are right… and yet neither one is correct! The research establishing 98.6°F as the correct and healthy body temperature for human beings is not only more than a century old, it was always a deeply flawed idea. I learned this when I spoke recently with Philip A. Mackowiak, MD, infectious disease specialist and professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and author of Fever: Basic Mechanisms and Management. He agreed to set the record straight  and to tell us what we really need to know to correctly care for ourselves or others who are sick and feeling feverish.

Fever Fact #1: There is no such thing as a “normal” body temperature — it varies for a bunch of different reasons.

Dr. Mackowiak recently did a study that showed that the average body temperature in healthy adults aged 18 to 40 is 98.2°F. … but, he said, that’s only an average and it is common for body temperatures to be quite different from that. A person’s body temperature tends to decline with age, often closer to 96°F by age 85, depending on gender (women are likely to have slightly higher temperatures than men). Furthermore, a given person’s normal body temperature varies throughout the day — it can change with the environment, the time of day or activities. There are some people who have a wide temperature variance over the course of the day — varying, say, from 96.2°F to 98°F — while others stay within a more limited range.

Advice:  Dr. Mackowiak suggests identifying your own “normal” temperature range. Using a digital oral thermometer, take your temperature four times a day, four hours apart at each measure — in the early morning, around noon, in the late afternoon and just before bed. Do this for several consecutive days, charting your results, and you will know your personal temperature pattern, which will then help you know when you have a fever.

Fever Fact #2: Without other concerning symptoms (such as malaise, sweating, vertigo, etc.), a slight rise in temperature is nothing to fret about.

While an elevation in temperature can be taken as a sign that your body is fighting an infection, the change should be considered just one factor in the overall assessment of your condition.

Any number of serious issues may be preceded by unexplained spikes in temperature, so you should contact your physician to see if a high fever needs to be checked out. Children can tolerate a temperature as high as 104°F briefly, but with a high risk for convulsions. For adults, a high fever can cause delirium.

Fever Fact #3: Don’t worry about a slight or moderate fever — just figure out why you have it.

Dr. Mackowiak told me that what’s important about fever is knowing why you have one. He said that high temperatures can actually be useful in disabling bacterial cells (which is one good reason why we have fevers in our body’s defense arsenal). “However, there’s no question that a temperature is an indication that something abnormal is going on,” he notes.

Fever Fact #4: It’s OK to treat a moderate fever.

It’s true that fever has a job to do, but if you really feel miserable, take something to bring it down. There are many good over-the-counter medications you can take (acetaminophen, aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen and others) and doing so can be helpful in bringing down your internal temperature and thus lowering your metabolic rate. This helps your body have more energy, which also helps you fight the infection that is making you ill.

An old saying holds that you should “starve a fever,” but Dr. Mackowiak said that as far as he knows, that’s an idea that has never been studied scientifically. He advises that you eat according to how well you feel — and adds that, yes, just as you’ve always heard, you should drink plenty of fluids.

Source:   Philip A. Mackowiak, MD, infectious disease specialist and chief of the medical care clinical center at the VA Maryland Health Care System, and professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, both in Baltimore, and author of Fever: Basic Mechanisms and Management.

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