The fever is a beautiful biochemical dance that reveals its footsteps to a symphony of predictable chaos. A fever that has resulted from an infectious condition is different from elevations in body temperature due to exercise, bathing, saunas, or sunbathing. Fever may be defined as a temporary elevation in the thermoregulatory "set point," usually by about 1.8-3.6˚F (1-2˚C). The fever is a product of the innate immune system’s attempt to neutralize an infectious foreign invader (i.e. virus, bacteria).

How Does An Infection Create a Fever?

The hypothalamus is the head conductor of the temperature symphony. When a macrophage ("big eater") starts to chomp on an infecting organism, a byproduct is released called a pyrogen. This pyrogen then triggers the release of interleukin-1 (IL-1), which travels in the blood stream to the hypothalamus and stimulates the production of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), which causes the body temperature set-point to be turned up. Like turning up the thermostat in your house, the body now thinks it’s too cold so it starts cranking up the heat. The hypothalamus generates heat and conserves heat at the same time. It conserves heat by teaming up with the autonomic nervous system causing vasoconstriction, which makes the peripheral blood vessels in the skin contract driving all the blood to the internal organs. Your skin is now colder which makes you cover yourself with warmer clothes or blankets, and the internal organs, especially the liver, become heat generators. Furthermore, you get the chills which cause piloerection (goose bumps) and shuts down the sweating mechanism and then you start shivering to make the muscles generate even more heat. By the way, when you break a fever you sweat a lot and vasodilate to cool the body back down.

IL-1 has a few other key jobs: it signals the hypothalamus to cause you to sleep to preserve energy, it causes the liver to pump out immune and body-repair chemicals, and IL-1 goes to the skeletal muscles to trigger muscle tissue breakdown. The postural muscles from the legs and back are usually used for this purpose which is why these areas are commonly susceptible to aches during a fever and chills. Muscles are not there to just move us around or look good at the beach, they are also a rich source of protein and amino acids. As IL-1 stimulates the unraveling of these muscle proteins, the result is an increase in the body’s amino acid pool. This amino acid pool suppresses your appetite, and provides your body with the raw materials for immune defense, tissue repair, and energy. This is important because when your body temperature goes above 99.5˚F the digestive system shuts down. In fact, if you eat during a fever, the food will not be properly digested and there will be an added burden on the system causing it to use up resources that would otherwise be available for fighting the infection.

Fever is an immune system stimulant. "When the body temperature is elevated in fever, white blood cell production is increased as is the rate of white blood cell release in the circulation. At the same time, white blood cell mobility and killing ability is enhanced, the production of interferon is speeded up and antibody production is increased up to twenty times," according to Drs. Wade Boyle and André Saine. This much heat also makes it unbearable for many infectious organisms and many types of bugs are killed at high body temperatures. In fact, Drs. Boyle and Saine state that "between 106-110˚F malignant cells are selectively destroyed," which is why "some cancer clinics are employing various hyperthermia techniques to kill cancer."

The brain ultimately orchestrates these responses, and if you do not get in its way (with anti-pyretic drugs like aspirin and acetaminophen), a fever can be your best medicine. This sophisticated elegance is a classic example of Vis Medicatrix Naturae (the healing powers of nature). Because Hippocrates knew that fever signaled the stimulation of the body's defenses to fight off disease, The Father of Medicine has been quoted as saying, "Give me a fever, and I can cure any disease." How could we have been so audacious as to think that some drug that has only been around for a decade or two can be better medicine than what has taken human evolution millennia to figure out?

The Fear of Fever

Sure a fever can be uncomfortable, but most of the harm associated with high fevers does not come from the elevation in temperature itself. Rather, it is dehydration (especially if there is vomiting or diarrhea), or electrolyte imbalance, or the underlying infectious agent itself that can cause impairment. Remember, if you eat while you are feverish, once again Drs. Boyle and Saine remind us that, "you are interfering with [your] body's attempt to overcome the disease and are in danger of running the fever to harmful levels." Just stay hydrated, white-knuckle through it, and consider the recommendations that we will detail in the next article to further help your body boost your immune system.

Key Sources:
Boyle W, Saine A, Lectures in Naturopathic Hydrotherapy

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