A Blast From the Past - Feed a Cold; Starve a Fever
Remember that one? Well there is truth in it. Lena Sanchez, a retired RN medical office administrator, now holistic healer and author of Antibiotic Alternatives to Preventing Mega Bacteria, confirms this from her 30 years of experience. Her experience was that most patients, especially mothers of young patients, would panic over fevers and insist something be done to lower the temperature.
Doctors often foolishly succumbed to their pleas. Lena Sanchez's stance is that fever is part of the immune system's clean up from bacteria waste products or an attempt to halt viral replication. Either way, fever needs to be there and not minimized by drugs. It is extremely rare that a fever will exceed 106 degrees Fahrenheit or 41 degrees Celsius.
But while it may be okay for a person with a common cold and very little (under 101 F or 38 C) or no fever to eat or be fed, a solid fever does need to be starved, especially if viral influenza is being experienced. The liver is the clearing house for both digestion and detox. Lena Sanchez recommends fasting on very light broths and purified water to assist an overburdened liver during the fever process of getting rid of the body's microbe waste materials. She also recommends enemas, which could shorten the fast.
She has seen pneumonia patients who were encouraged to eat more get worse and even die. She claims this only serves to push the disease one's fever is fighting deeper. And of course, she has seen several who followed her suggestion of starving the fever get thoroughly well quicker.
Another Blast from the Past - Sweat It Out
It was quite common for many to observe that by not trying to cool off, and by actually bundling up more and allowing the body heat to induce even sweating, that the next day the fever broke or reduced significantly. But even with that, the notion was to break the fever. What was really happening was that by encouraging the fever to completely take over, the fever did its job and was no longer needed!
An American practitioner of Chinese Medicine, Karen S. Vaughan, advises, "Initial levels of both Wind heat and Wind cold [Chinese Medicine terms describing underlying situations that induce fever] are treated by inducing sweating. You would take a warm bath, cover yourself with quilts and go to bed drinking the teas.
"If the disease is not treated at this level or is treated inappropriately then it will penetrate to more internal levels and you will need strong antimicrobial herbs that drain the pathogens through the bowels and the urine."
Often a fever is accompanied by chills, even to the point of shivering. That makes it easy to bundle up and sweat! But sometimes that is not the case. Then it takes a willful effort to follow the bundle up and sweat protocol. So never mind breaking the fever with or without medication as the goal. Let the fever help you heal.
All the sources cited for this article tend to agree. It's the condition of the patient that matters more than the fever. Someone who is very ill without fever (under 101 F or 38 C) should cause more concern than someone running a high fever but resting well while taking in fluids and eating little.
Read the full article by Paul Fassa, citizen journalist here.
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