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If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)

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Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)

#11

Post by polotics »

ilaksh wrote: post #3

This isn't a scientific take necessarily, but did those studies look at the overall time of resolution of the illness and severity of the fever and related symptoms as well as the activity level of the patients? Because for me, significant fever is always accompanied by some degree of malaise. Without drugs, the only way to relieve it is to conserve energy and immobilize. My thought is that if you take the pain relie…

Also, if you take the pain reliever and it allows you to drink more water while resting...

Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)

#12

Post by vundercind »

bamboozled wrote: post #4
ilaksh wrote: post #3

This isn't a scientific take necessarily, but did those studies look at the overall time of resolution of the illness and severity of the fever and related symptoms as well as the activity level of the patients? Because for me, significant fever is always accompanied by some degree of malaise. Without drugs, the only way to relieve it is to conserve energy and immobilize. My thought is that if you take the pain relie…

I usually only use them when I can’t rest due to pain or discomfort. I’m going to bet the resting is more important than the not resting with a fever. But I’d love to know the scientific answer too.

I’m pretty much certain that 8-9hrs of sleep per night with a fever reducer and/or decongestant and a little bit of weed is gonna get me better faster than no drugs and getting three or fewer hours of sleep multiple nights in a row.

When illnesses get really bad for me it’s usually because they’ve only let me sleep like five total hours in three nights or something like that, due to fever chills or lots of snot and a very-sore throat. The lack of sleep is what wrecks me.

Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)

#14

Post by dsr_ »

rdedev wrote: post #13

My goto protocol is, wait for 3 days before starting any meds. If symptoms get worse than tolerable or new symptoms pop up then start some thing.

There are a fair number of illnesses that will kill you or irreversibly damage you in three days.

Not everything, just enough that this is bad advice without serious qualification.

Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)

#15

Post by pfannkuchen »

Is it possible that fever is a legacy feature?

Like I would expect microbes specialized to the human/mammalian system environment to be able to deal with the relatively small temperature range of fevers.

The selection pressure of fever is pretty well-suited to microbial evolution. It's very incremental, and microbes are known to live in a wide variety of temperatures. It seems much easier to get around than antibiotics, for example, which has of course happened.

However, there may have been a time when fever didn't yet exist and therefore the microbes were not yet able to handle it. As the feature evolved in mammals it was successful for a while since it dynamically changed the microbe's environment.

If this arms race process was slow enough the feature may be pretty deeply baked into the mammalian genome and persist today despite a relative lack of usefulness compared to the past and even some increased rate of death in the case of high fever.

Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)

#16

Post by pinkmuffinere »

dsr_ wrote: post #14
rdedev wrote: post #13

My goto protocol is, wait for 3 days before starting any meds. If symptoms get worse than tolerable or new symptoms pop up then start some thing.

There are a fair number of illnesses that will kill you or irreversibly damage you in three days. Not everything, just enough that this is bad advice without serious qualification.

> If symptoms get worse than tolerable…

I feel like this covers that problem, no? Surely the kill-you-in-three-days problems must be very painful? And if they aren’t very painful, I wouldn’t be going to the ER anyways, so I’d die before my scheduled visit — surely at least a week out in most places I’ve visited

Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)

#17

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

dsr_ wrote: post #14
rdedev wrote: post #13

My goto protocol is, wait for 3 days before starting any meds. If symptoms get worse than tolerable or new symptoms pop up then start some thing.

There are a fair number of illnesses that will kill you or irreversibly damage you in three days. Not everything, just enough that this is bad advice without serious qualification.

That’s a low intersection of medical situations where you have three days to live, but can be saved by an OTC treatment.

Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)

#18

Post by koala_man »

haspok wrote: post #10

This is from 2023: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230315132451.h... "Mild fever helps clear infections faster, new study suggests Research on fish shows waiting before reaching for medications may be beneficial for humans" So basically nobody has a clue, but we are working on it.

Maybe it works better on cold blooded animals

Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)

#19

Post by bobthepanda »

Fever is very interesting.

What’s also interesting is that we still have no idea about the mechanism by which acetominophen/paracetamol actually works despite studying it for 150y. https://medicine.tufts.edu/news-events/news/how-does-acetami...

Re: If Fever Helps Fight Infection, Should I Avoid Fever-Reducing Drugs? (2018)

#20

Post by francisofascii »

A fever "appears to diminish viral replication". Viruses are the pathogens we mostly deal with. So I tend to avoid NSAIDS for the most part. One other point, sometimes you have a mild elevated temperature that is not considered a fever and don't realize it. 98.6 F/37 C is outdated and is usually higher than normal for most people. If I have a 98.6 reading, I am probably sick. Sub 98.0 is more normal for me, depending on time of day.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7812885/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8765667/

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