It may be better to let one fever light run your course instead of automatically resorting to medication, as can help clear the infection more quicklyaccording to a new fish study conducted by the University of Alberta (Canada).
In his work, published in the scientific journal ‘eLife‘the researchers discovered that the moderate fever untreated helped the pieces a quickly clear the infection of your body, it controlled inflammation and repaired damaged tissue.
“We let nature do what it does, and in this case it was very positive,” says the immunologist Daniel Barredalead author of the study and a professor in the College of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Sciences and the College of Science.
“We let nature do what it does, and in this case it was very positive”
moderate fever is self-resolvingwhich means that the body can turn it on and off naturally without medication, Barreda explains.
The advantages of natural fever for human health have yet to be confirmed by research, but the researchers say that since the mechanisms that drive and maintain fever are shared among animals, it is reasonable to expect similar benefits in humans.
That suggests that we should resist resorting to fever reducers, such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, at the first symptoms of mild fever. “They take away the discomfort you feel with a fever, but it’s also likely that we’re giving up some of the benefits of this natural response“, he pointed out.
The study helps shed light on the mechanisms that contribute to the benefits of mild fever, which Barreda notes has been evolutionarily conserved across the animal kingdom for 550 million years: “All animals examined have this biological response to infection.
For the study, the subjects were given pieces a bacterial infection and then its behavior was followed and evaluated using machine learning. External symptoms were similar to those seen in humans with fever, including immobility, fatigue, and malaise. These symptoms were related to important immune mechanisms of the animals.
Research has shown that natural fever offers a response that not only activates defenses against infectionbut also helps control it.
The researchers discovered that the fever helped clear the infection from the fish in about seven days, half the time it took for animals not allowed to run a fever. The fever also helped End inflammation and repair injured tissue.
“Take advantage of medical advances while taking advantage of the benefits of natural immunity mechanisms”
“Our goal is to determine how best to take advantage of our medical advances while continuing to reap the benefits of natural immunity mechanisms“, Barreda has riveted.
