I have a fever and am still afraid of the cold. Can covering my sweat with a quilt really help?
Covering the sweat with a quilt when you have a fever and chills is the same as drinking "hot ginger syrup". It can neither really cause sweating nor reduce fever.
The truth I have already explained in
To put it simply, the process of fever can be divided into three stages, namely the body temperature rising period, the plateau period and the body temperature falling period.
Aversion to cold appears at the beginning of fever, that is, the period when body temperature rises.
My body temperature is higher than normal, why do I feel cold instead?
This is because although the neurons in the hypothalamic temperature center responsible for regulating body temperature receive both core body temperature information and skin and environmental temperature information uploaded by peripheral skin temperature receptors.
But, in the final analysis, the body temperature center regulates the body's core body temperature, and usually the influence of peripheral and environmental temperatures can be ignored.
In fever, the thermosensitive neurons in the hypothalamic temperature center responsible for regulating body temperature increase the set temperature under the action of a heat source. At this time, the actual core body temperature felt by the body is lower than the set target body temperature, and it will naturally feel cold.
It is this feeling of cold that activates thermoregulatory neurons and sends signals to save or generate heat through the contraction of skin blood vessels and/or muscle shivering, so as to raise the body temperature to the current elevated body temperature as quickly as possible.
In other words, the feeling of chills during the period of rising body temperature has almost nothing to do with the ambient temperature.
At this time, covering yourself with a quilt does not even mean "covering sweat". In fact, it does not even reduce the feeling of chills.
Why do people think that wearing a quilt can really "cover sweat" and reduce fever?
This is the same as people thinking that drinking "hot ginger syrup" can induce sweating and reduce fever. It is just that the body's own inherent internal cooling credit is mistakenly attributed to these useless measures.
in "New Crown Sheep has a fever and is still afraid of the cold. Can drinking "brown sugar, green onion and white ginger soup" really reduce the fever? In the comments of the article, many friends insisted that drinking "brown sugar, green onion and white ginger soup" can reduce fever.
However, they almost always say "the fever went away the next day".
I made it very clear in the article that drinking "brown sugar, green onion and white ginger soup" is useless. It means that drinking it during the period of rising body temperature of a fever will not cause sweating and has no antipyretic effect.
During the period when the body temperature drops, the body itself will sweat due to the increased need for heat dissipation. Drinking hot "brown sugar, green onion and white ginger soup" at this time can indeed increase sweating, but this increased sweating is completely unnecessary.
When the body temperature drops during the fever cycle, there is no need for any treatment at all, and the body temperature will drop on its own. This is determined by the body's endogenous cooling mechanism. At this time, covering myself with a quilt, although it cannot eliminate the feeling of cold, can reduce heat dissipation more effectively than skin contraction, which can raise the body temperature faster and shorten the period of temperature rise.
Moreover, at this stage, just covering the quilt is not enough, we should heat the body and accelerate the increase of body temperature.
For example, take a hot bath under supervision. Even if it is not possible, take a hot water foot bath. Of course, you can also drink some hot drinks, not limited to hot ginger syrup.
These "heating" measures can eliminate the feeling of chills and shorten the period of rising body temperature far more effectively than covering up with a quilt.
Of course, the greater significance of these measures is to eliminate a series of physical discomforts at this stage, including but not limited to body aches.
When the body temperature no longer continues to rise, that is, it enters the body temperature plateau period, all these measures are no longer effective.
The key is that when the body temperature drops, covering the body with a quilt is not only useless, but also hinders the loss of body heat and hinders the drop in body temperature.
I have introduced in the previous article that during the period of body temperature drop, the body's most efficient way to dissipate heat is to sweat.
The mechanism of sweating and cooling is that evaporation of sweat on the surface of the skin can take away a large amount of heat.
According to research, complete evaporation of each gram of sweat on the skin can take away 0.58 kcal of heat.
If 1,000 grams of sweat is evaporated completely on the surface of the skin, it can take away 580 kilocalories of heat, which is equivalent to more than a quarter of the heat generated by a person's 24-hour basal metabolism . This shows how efficient sweating is in dissipating heat.
However, if the sweat cannot completely evaporate on the skin surface, but flows along the skin, it will not play the role of evaporation and heat dissipation.
Covering yourself with a quilt or even wearing thick clothes will hinder the evaporation of sweat on the skin, greatly reducing the heat dissipation and cooling effect of sweating.
Please note that even if sweat is not lost and evaporates from wet quilts and clothes, it will not have the effect of dissipating heat and cooling.
Therefore, during the period when the body temperature drops, covering the body with a quilt can indeed "cover the sweat". However, this "covering the sweat" is harmful to the body's heat dissipation and cooling.
When the environment is abnormally hot in summer, covering the sweat with a quilt can even cause heat stroke where the body temperature rises uncontrollably, and can be fatal in severe cases.
Therefore, when you have a fever, covering yourself with a quilt will not work when the body temperature rises; when the body temperature reaches a plateau period, it does not matter whether you cover it or not; when the body temperature drops, covering the quilt can indeed "cover the sweat", but this "covering the sweat" is purely harmful and useless.
For example, a summary of the fever guidelines for children in more than 50 countries found that the recommendations on "covering or not covering" are not entirely consistent.
Among them, 13 guidelines recommended that the cover should be thinner; 11 recommendations, based on the comfort level of the child, cover the child if he feels cold and not cover if he feels hot; 2 recommended not to cover the child too tightly; 1 recommended covering the child when the body temperature rises, and then not covering; 1 recommended frequent replacement of the cover; 4 recommended not covering.
Anyway, no fever guide recommends counting on covering up sweat with a quilt to reduce fever.
