A recent Facebook post: ìMy little girl has a fever. She has been trying so hard to fight something off, I guess it won.îNO! Her little body has won ñ it is strong, smart and doing exactly the right thing! Who are we to second guess the intelligence that makes our body tick? I use the quote above as an example because this is a conversation I have often with people. Fevers are a common symptom in childhood. We get sick, our body fights it; we get stronger from that battle. But only if the body is allowed to fight.Many parents are afraid of a fever, trying with all their might to bring their childís fever down as quickly as possible. A study in the journal ìPediatricsî showed that 91 percent of parents surveyed thought a fever could cause harmful effects, and 89 percent of parents reached for a fever reducer before temperatures reached 102 degrees.But hereís the thing Ö nothing bad is going to happen if you donít treat a fever. The fever is there for a REASON! A fever is one of the most powerful defense mechanisms we have against disease and infection. A fever indicates that your child (or yourself for that matter) is fighting something off, some infection ñ whether a cold, flu or ear infection. The fever is not an illness; it is designed to heat the body as much as necessary to fight off the invading organisms. Bring the fever down and what is going to fight for your little one?A fever actually activates your childís immune system; a rise in body temperature makes it more difficult for these organisms to survive ñ they like normal body temperatures, they breed there. Bring the fever down and they can just proliferate. Bring the fever down by using fever reducers or cool baths or compresses and what will the body do in response? Raise the temperature!Now parents get more excited because their childís temperature goes higher. When a fever is artificially suppressed, the bodyís defense mechanism is not fully activated.So what should you do? Let the body do what it is supposed to do ñ let the fever run its course. It can actually reduce the severity and length of an illness. The brain will regulate how high a fever will go. Usually spikes in temperature are just that ñ a spike ñ not lasting very long at all. It is really very rare for a fever to reach dangerous levels and stay there. Monitor your child, keep them hydrated, cuddle up and read them a book and more than likely doing nothing at all will get them through this battle faster than interfering with their bodyís ability to heal. In many cases, a fever actually strengthens the immune system and helps prevent susceptibility to other illnesses later in life.
