1. own research required 2. if it were only a short paragraph, I'd get exactly the answer you can find on this platform in regards to fever. Wrong or half truths.
3. It was 3 questions to hyperpyrexia that are needed to get the context and set a level to what answer I expect.
4. You do not get a satisfying answer to a question that requires in depth analysis of a concept, that is treated contradicotry even in medical literature if someone does not get where I'm coming from. 5. Remeber how welcoming you were, while the initial question already contained most of it? and it still got 3 downvotes and I'm suddenly hostile and conspriatory while I'm just defending accusations
5. If it is not made clear to what level this answer is expected, a discussion would be inevitable. Because I am perfectly capable of googling myself. 6. maybe you just insert it into chatgpt, and see how conspiratorical it really is.
and at last the comparison is not as ridiculous as you think. Symptom: Hyperventilation/Fever, both known to be beneficial as they result from an underlying issue. While in hyperventilation the cause is treated no one would think about lowering the rate just because. In fever it is lowered just because. A healthy person thinks his flu fever might kill him if left untreated and lowers it just because. Why is it assumed that it wil get too high? Its exactly like hyperventilating during exercise.
there we don´t fear of dying of pulmonary embolism or acidosis but we fear that that our body temperature gets too high. If you feel like I am misinterpreting the general view on fever I am happy to change my mind but assertion of strawmanning is just lazy. Fever Phobia is known since the 80s and still being published about
@Lukas4235 It is still clear that you are trying to engage in a discussion here. Focus your post on a specific question that you want answered.
In most circumstances, fever is lowered because that makes people feel better. Same thing for pain relief. Generally, feeling better is considered a Good Thing in medicine and elsewhere.
It's not clear if you want to discuss that part of fever treatment, or to focus only on dangerously high fever (which is also treated, for reasons besides merely making people feel better)
I already rephrased it, I don´t know what else to change. As a scientist I find it weird how such different things are all seen the same, and how medical professionals still believe that a fever rises to hyperpyrexia if not treated with antipyresis. But you just gotta open ANY publication esp. on fever phobia and see everything I said with the exception that there is always this caveat of "but if it gets too high" which I guess is just to be on the secure side of argumentation.
and I know it might make you feel better. And honestly data suggests no adverse effect of treating fever in humans. But can we really generalize? Can you be sure that with certain populations it might not show some adverse effects after all? E.g. in antibioitc resistant strain infections? I´d rather have fever as a fail safe switch. Can you be sure that pathogens do not persist and cause problems way later as they might not have been cleared as effectively as they could have
@Lukas4235 For a start, there are still two questions there. I don't know how else to further emphasize that on Stack Exchange generally each post should be a single question
@Lukas4235 I appreciate the work you've put in to modifying your question. I'm not sure the latest version is sensible, though. "Is hyperpyrexia a physiological process or does it reflect system failure?" seems like a false dichotomy and also comes with some unclear terminology. What is a "system failure"? For an example of the false dichotomy, clotting of blood is certainly a physiological process; I suppose you might consider a heart attack or stroke to be a sort of "system failure"
These involve "successful" execution of the physiological process of clotting but in a bad place or where the clot can embolize to block blood flow, resulting in system failure of a sort
ok. Yeah failure in that sense that it is not a voluntary reaction (like its mostly communicated and the case with fever but imo not in hyperpyrexia) of our bodies but a decompensation of the system (imo hyperpyrexia, where antipyresis would not work anymore)
@Lukas4235 - I don't want to argue with you, just want to point out that fact and opinion aren't the same thing. You state "In fever it is lowered just because. A healthy person thinks his flu fever might kill him if left untreated and lowers it just because." That isn't fact, though you may believe it. I see now that @BryanKrause has addressed this in part. You can't speak for all normal people just as you can't speak for all doctors and all patients (in your inflammation post.)
Most people I've interacted with don't think they'll die from a fever, or even that it will continue to rise if they don't treat it. Fever feels bad. It causes myalgias, which feel crummy. It causes chills which are uncomfortable, sometimes shaking chills (which are even worse). It is often accompanied by headaches, which are unpleasant. Most people treat fever because of the effects it has on our bodies, those that I listed, not because they're fever phobic.
With my own children, I only treated their fevers only if they were complaining of feeling bad; if not, they were given comfort foods, encouraged to rest, etc. So even if I'm the only person who approaches fever this way, that makes your absolute-type opinions incorrect.
You state "... how medical professionals still believe that a fever rises to hyperpyrexia if not treated with antipyresis." That is simply and categorically untrue; if any physician believes that, they must be very, very early in their training. I have never believed that. One needs only to follow a few fevers to know that they wax and wane naturally. In hospitals, temperatures are taken all the time. Your insistence that we treat fevers all the time is just not true.
We know that if we don't treat a fever, it will eventually "break" (most people know this). If we treat, we are treating the effects or cause of the fever. Any statement to the opposite is merely opinion.
nice an actual helpful answer. In my experience I know of panicking parents because the y run out of fever medication, trying to inhibit fever already at an early stage as they fear seizures, and virutally everyone I talk to thinks that it can get too high. So maybe just a cultural difference. Besides that reviews even from 2019 and 2023 on fever phobia show that its still sth people have massive misconceptions exactly like I notice it.
Then there is still the question remaining. Can an infectious fever get too high? you are now diverging from your original argument that it can and hyperyrexia is too high of a fever. I never claimed it does not provide comfort. I´d also appreciated your thoughts to my "fever as fail safe" or pathogen persistence caveats I thnik are worth considering.
plus masking symptoms and therefore delaying emergency care is another thing to be considered, when parent pump their kids with antipyretics. and where I come from this is done irrespective of the wellbeing of the child i.e. just because.
"67% believed temperature will go up indefinitely if not treated"-https://www.pediatriconcall.com/pediatric-journal/view/fulltext-articles/1501/J/0/0/826/0 judging from literature it seems that you have may have a bias here.
@Lukas4235 I have gotten the impression from what you've written so far that your concerns are mostly about misperceptions/lack of clarity about fever in the literature, that is, among physicians and scientists. It's quite different to say that parents in a particular country have misperceptions about fever
@Lukas4235 = "In my experience... virutally everyone I talk to..." This is irrelevant. Do not mistake what you believe for truth. They are two different things, and when stating things as if beliefs were fact, the question loses meaning.
Another falsehood: "...exactly like I notice it"
Yes, I read that, and you have cherry-picked the one statistic that supports your assertion. The rest puts it into a more normal context.
@bryan I think that its intertwined and I care about both because it has implications in private and intensive care settings. @anongoodnurse you just stated your experience. I must not state mine. Are you being serious. . And don´t come with I need to prove my assertions. I provided sources for everything. And only a small fraction of the available ones.
I tried being friendly but I am slowly loosing patience as you are showing no understanding at all. And you literally just have to open ANY publication regarding this topic.
@anongoodnurse and @Lukas4235 I think it's perfectly plausible that both of your experiences are true and valid to you: that anongoodnurse has not encountered people with these misconceptions and that Lukas has.
@Lukas4235 You explicitly stated that medical professionals believe fever will rise continuously if untreated, this is what anongoodnurse was objecting to. Then you provided evidence that parents of children in Portugal believe this. That's not intertwined, those are entirely different claims
All the reports (4566) suggested that a fear of fever and a tendency to over treat was common among physicians and nurses.-https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/apa.14739 Plus anongoodnurse also objected to my initial statement, that it can´t get too high as you can read in the comments. she now seemes to pull back.
@Lukas4235 4566 is the total number of individuals surveyed across multiple studies; all of the studies they cite showed some tendency to over treat fever (with unclear definition of "over treat"), not all of the 4566 individuals surveyed
The first of the references they cite (#9) says "many physicians agree that treatment to reduce fever is mostly for the comfort of the child". The emphasis of the paper is still on parents anxiety about fever; the discussion about physicians is mostly about how their tendency to treat fever (for comfort of the child) may be misinterpreted by parents as a need to treat fever for safety
"Parents may not understand that many pediatricians support fever reduction because parents are anxious of because the child may be uncomfortable"
There is no conclusion made here about "over treatment", that seems to be an editorialization by the citing paper
I really appreciate your effort. "Our review shows that the perceived beneficial effects of antipyretics may be overstated and their use excessive. Unnecessary drug administration may be causing more harm than good"-from 2024 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10851038/#sec3 I don´t wann a skip through all literature again, to make myself clear. This is also now diverging from my original quest for the etioloy of hyperpyrexia. anongoodnurse commented under one of my deleted Posts: "Ther is no infectious fever that gets too high." HUH? 106°+ is considered a medical emergency." implying…
another comment "As to your comment that fever becomes something else, that's nonsense. It becomes a "high fever", which is what hyperpyrexia means. It's not a system failure; it's physiological", to me thats quite contrary to what she comments now.
@bryan the first source you cite : "Ninety-eight (65%) believed that fever itself could be dangerous to a child" so exactly what I am saying. Its from 1992 though so I hope it improved, but all the doctors I talk to and pharmacists are certain that fever can get too high.
@Lukas4235 _ I don't know what you're trying to prove. Infections can cause dangerously high fevers; the young woman with pyelonephritis and a temp of 107.7°F was an example of that. I'm not reversing my position. Most of the medical literature I am familiar with uses hyperpyrexia as elevated fever, though there is some crossover usage. I don't make absolute statements unless they're true: I don't say, "all doctors..." or "all people" or "all the literature",
because I don't know every doctor, every person or all the literature. I only know what I know. You use absolutes, which weakens your position. I have not changed my opinion(s) or my position(s). A temperature of 107.7 does require treatment in my opinion, and is an emergency. As I said, the only higher temperature I saw was in someone who was dead.
I never said that no fever requires treatment. You're twisting my words, and I don't appreciate it.
You are the one who stated that no fever could ever get too high, and therefore no fever needed to be treated, and for that opinion (and the equally invalid statement that no inflammation needs to be treated) your post was deleted.
The absolutes, the twisting, the unsound arguments you make are the reason I don't want to engage further with you, and I won't answer your questions because I doubt that you'll believe me anyway.
And I don't know why you're complaining aboput me to @BryanKrause. He isn't responsible for my words or opinions or beliefs. He's not the only person trying to correct your statements.
I don´t use absolutes. I explicitly say " in my experience" or "literature I came across"" people I talked to"... I agree 107.7 requires treatment but is also en extremely rare case. Did antipyretics work here or how was it treated. I guess physical cooling? Youre taking it out of context. Me saying that infectious fever can´t get too high was presented under a specific definition of fever. And it is still up to debate whether hyperpyrexia is a fever. The only question I care for right now. And I was talking about acute inflammation for which I can not find publications that suggest a need …
Discussion between Lukas4235 and Brya…
Discussion between Lukas4235 and Brya…