Last
night I was feverish, well, I like the word febrile. My lungs are clogged up with mucus, sinuses full of bleh, and lots of coughing and quite funny sneezes. I was sleeping a bit, but probably as much as being awake. I seem to have much reduced cardio efficacy as I feel quite nasty when even just coughing, getting up and walking around I am like in slow motion.
But I was pleased to confirm my temperature is up, at first I thought it was a chill, that cold in your bones feeling, which I would do a different thing to treat it. My mother used to say, feed a cold, starve a fever.
Well, I haven't eaten much since yesterday morning, and that alone was helping. Anyway, with diagnosis in hand, I am applying my fever cure.
Fevers are caused by an infection that both alters and depends on an altered temperature to survive. With fever, the heater is turned higher than normal, and, importantly, the normal temperature trigger for sweating is turned off.
So, apart from sitting or lying quite still when possible, and trying not to forget to drink a bit of water, I have to avoid high energy foods. I had a really bad fever some years back, and I added some chilli to the mix.
Chilli's special active ingredient, capsaicin, causes cells directly to increase both heat and fluid production. Chilli fiends may be familiar with watering eyes and mouth and sweating.
Well, fevers stop sweating. By forcing the skin cells to sweat, the core body temperature is driven down, and the infection depends on this elevated temperature, and it greatly dimnishes its population. Last time I had a fever, by 3 days eating very little, staying inactive and eating chilli, I was well again.
Being now about half through this soup loaded with Sambal, I already feel I am sweating a little.
Honestly in this state I am absolutely useless, I can hardly manage what I must - I already this morning took a tram (I found an anonymous travel card with credit some time back), and I am not planning on doing much other than sitting and laying down.
Update
Some people have said it was their understanding that fevers were caused by the immune system trying to kill bacteria and viruses with heat (many organisms have narrow survival temperature ranges). Well, when I have had fevers, I remember not sweating. I remember often feeling cold, but to touch or with a thermometer, it is above normal.
Not only that, but chilli is a decongestant and expectorant. It increases not just sweat but also the water levels in mucus which allows it to be coughed up properly.
I couldn't find this at first, but then I found a good article about chilli and colds:
http://www.livestrong.com/article/485059-cold-remedy-with-cayenne-pepper-lemon/
We can't stop here! This is Whale country!
L
oki was born in Australia, now is wandering Amsterdam again after 9 months in Sofia, Bulgaria. IT generalist, physics theorist, futurist and cyber-agorist.
Loki's life mission is to establish a secure, distributed layer atop the internet, and enable space migration, preferably while living in a beautiful mountain house somewhere with a good woman, and lots of farm animals and gardens, where he can also go hunting and camping.
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Feel better soon!
Get well soon. I was hit with a cold when I flew out on my work trip this week. Getting through it with some painkillers and lots of fluids. I think you just have to let it run its course whilst the body gets the defences working.
I am gonna get me a big fresh squeezed OJ this afternoon also... My mother always said lemonade, the fake clear stuff, butI like OJ or cranberry better.
Yes, it is best to just lay about doing nothing. Especially with the lung congestion I have. It isn't as bad as what hit me right on steemfest, but I am in slow motion. The difference now is I am hot and have a bit of a chronic headache.
But I am feeling better.
I hope you feel better soon!
I had to look up Sambal, never heard of it! I use powdered Cayenne Pepper. I do think hot spices can be healthy.
I had not heard that an infection depends on elevated temperature. I am thinking that the elevated temperature helps the body fight the infection. I usually don't treat a low grade fever, just let my body do what it needs to do. But of course, you know what works best for you, and I hope your self doctoring does the trick!
The fever is not low grade, or at least, the total complex of sickness has almost shut me down, and when I cough as well as pain from so frequently, I get really hot and at first I was letting myself cool but I started also getting dizzy and general pain everywhere just even from any moderately intense exercise.
The rest and vitamin rich things I knew from years but I never got a bad fever very often, and it dragged on and on, and I got desprate, did some research, and learned about fever, sweating and chilli. It worked in 3 days, with a reduced food intake, and lots of lying down. The same is clearly working and you will see ina day or two I will be all energetic again.
Get well soon ! That hot chilli broth will be good for you , onions and lots of garlic fight off infections and kill germs so be sure to put plenty into your broth and you will be well in no time ! 🤒😖👍🍲
Interesting, because when I was 14 I had a terribly high fever and my old grandmother told me to get in bed and cover myself completely with blankets so I would sweat. I thought she was crazy telling me that, but after spending over an hour sweating profusely, it broke the fever, and I felt much better.
Resteemed, upvoted and shared. This post is earning a decent sum! :)
Yeah, it is the fact that to break the fever and how bad the fever makes you feel, that tells me that the "cooking the bugs" theory is wrong. I am quite sure fevers are caused by the pathogen hacking the temperature to make it more viable. That is, something that certain bacteria or viruses produces causes the cooling circuit to become insensitive and by forcing temperatures higher the cooler is turned back on and the pathogen dies in a cooler body.
It isn't just one, obviously. When I was reading about colds and flu, it said there is more than 100 distinct bacteria and viruses involved.
I wonder what it is that the viruses and bacteria produce that causes that, or if there has been any medical research conducted about it.
I'm thinking some medical research and medicine is a bit of a scam. A simple example is acid reflux - heartburn. How much money is spent on products to help with that yearly, and yet I've known for a long time now that the fastest and most effective way to end heartburn is by swallowing a large spoon of plain yellow mustard. It hurts some going down, but it works within a minute and beats everything currently on the market being sold.
Sometimes I think the medical establishment doesn't really look for a total cure to anything, but for a way to provide only partial relief products that cause dependency and that will give them recurring income.
for acid reflux issue: a spoon full of sodium bi carbonate in a glass of water! works like a dream. SBC is alkaline!
cheap and like mustard non toxic!
I'll try that next time. Thanks! :)
In every fixing business there is a certain amount of operators who create problems. Microsoft's terrible software makes so much work for people like me, for example.
It is extremely unethical and I hope that blockchains will be a part of eliminating fraudulent make-work by fixing things.