You give me FEVER

“Never know how much you love me, never know how much you care. When you put your arms around me, you give me fever I can barely bear. Fever. You give me fever. Everybody has got the fever that is something you all know. Fever isn’t such a nuisance, fever started long ago. I am a fire, I burn for you. Fever. What a lovely way to burn”

Remember this famous song ‘Fever’ by Peggy Lee? (Listen here to refresh your memory: https://youtu.be/JGb5IweiYG8)

Interesting, how well this song describes what a fever really is.

A fever is nothing but another effort by our body to kill something harmful or toxic. This harmful thing can be anything: an external virus or bacteria or simply our old food rotting inside.  It is unpleasant and not acceptable to the body, so it tries to get rid of it through what we call acute diseases. An acute disease in naturopathy is the body’s effort to throw out toxins. A runny nose or cold; vomiting, diarreah and fever all fall under acute diseases. Acute diseases have rapid onsets (so a prolonged cold or long running fever does not qualify) and strong symptoms.

What do we do when food stored in jars shows signs of fungus or insects or worms? We simply put it in the sun. The heat of the sun either kills or drives them away.

The human body is doing the same. It gives itself a fever, i.e raises its temperature so that the resulting heat will burn the toxins. Eventually when the body has completed its internal burning, destroying what it set out to burn, the fever will break. You will feel that sweating which comes with a deep feeling of relief when the fever breaks naturally.

Hence don’t fear a fever, it is our friend. You can infact aid it by doing the following:

• Allow a fever to run its natural course. Do not take a paracetamol or similar drugs to break the fever before its time. I know this might be different from what we have been doing all our lives but try it and then decide.
• If the fever gets too high (especially true for smaller children: their temperature rises too quickly), put a wet towel on the forehead covering your temples. Keep changing this towel, dipping it in cold water. Most grandmothers in India did this. The logic is simple, fever should never go to the head, it is harmful in that area. So while the rest of the body can burn, the head needs to remain cool. We do the same while taking a steam bath or a sun bath or working outdoors in the sun, don’t we?
• Drink lots of fluids. While fever is one way of eliminating toxins from the body, another is flushing them out. Also the debris of all burned toxins need to be eliminated, so fluids will help carry them to the nearest eliminating organ.
• Eat very light (best if you can fast). Remember the body needs all its vital energy to do the cleaning, don’t divert this energy towards digestion by eating heavy meals.

If you aid your fever rather than supressing it, the body would have done a lot of internal cleaning and you will find your energy levels come back to normal fairly quickly.