So, you're not feeling well. You wake up with a stuffy nose, cough and fever. Not a great start to the day, but you take some medicine to clear your sinuses, suppress your cough and reduce your fever. Now you're feeling great. End of story... Wait, does that mean that your body was finished fighting the infection? Of course not. The symptoms meant that your body was fighting off the infection the way it is supposed to. Mucous is produced as a way to get rid of the dead bacteria/virus.. Coughing is your body's way of moving the infection out of your lungs. Fever is your body's way of heating itself up to kill off the infection (the same way we heat up food or water to kill off bacteria). So if you stopped these things from occurring before the infection was completely gone, how is your body supposed to fight off the infection? You removed your body's defense mechanisms and left it with no way to fight back. Our culture has been taught to believe there is a "magic pill for every ill." Unfortunately with this type of thinking, people learn to seek chemical solutions to every problem in their life. Mother Nature is the best doctor around because the best doctor is the one who resists the compulsion to interfere with the body's efforts and ability to heal itself. You need to allow time for Mother Nature to work before exposing yourself to the side effects of the medication you take.
“Coughs, sniffles, sneezes, and fever are good for you. Coughing and sneezing clear the airways of harmful irritants and allergy-causing substances while fevers actually fight virus and bacteria. Our body raises its temperature on purpose. Robert Mendelson, M.D. stated, 'Unless there are additional symptoms such as extreme listlessness, abnormal behavior, and other indicators of serious disease such as meningitis, your doctor should tell you there is nothing to worry about and send you and your child home.' Diseases are shortened by letting a safe fever run its course. Taking fever-reducing drugs or cough suppressants can lead to pneumonia or more serious respiratory infections.” -Dr. William B. Greenough, Professor of medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Treating symptoms ends up making a cold, the flu or any other sickness or disease worse. Symptoms are your body's attempt to heal itself. High blood pressure and high cholesterol are not diseases themselves, they are symptoms, your body's attempt to heal itself from another problem. You need to get to the root cause of the disease, not just treat the symptom. If you keep pulling a dandelion out by it's stem, it will continue to grow back until you remove the roots.
So what do you do? Remember, you are in charge of keeping your body well. You should feel empowered by how strong your body is and embrace symptoms as a way of knowing your body is doing what it's supposed to. By providing the proper nutrition to your body, minimizing your exposure to toxins, keeping your body moving, managing stress appropriately and making sure the nervous system is functioning properly will allow your body to respond the way it needs to.
Additional Information
Mechanism of a Fever:
When you contract an infection, your body responds by manufacturing more white blood cells (WBC) to destroy the bacteria and viruses and remove damaged tissue and unwanted materials from the body. When the activity of the WBC's is increased, they move more rapidly to the site of infection by the release of pyogens in the body, which are responsible for the rise in body temperature (fever). A rise in body temperature means the process of healing is speeding up and is something to be happy about. While reducing a fever may be more comfortable, you interrupt the body's natural healing process.
When Fevers are Truly Emergencies
If you are experiencing difficulty breathing, repetitive vomiting, loss of consciousness, twitching movements or you have a reason to believe the fever is the result of a cause other than infection (such as heatstroke or poisoning) you should be taken to the ER.
