FEVER, COLDS & FLU

Fever

For many centuries, and by even the most learned, fever has been regarded as a disease itself–a something to be overcome or cast out of the body. But modern knowledge no longer permits such an erroneous view, although many still cling to it–blindly accepting the doctrines taught them by “authority.” Fever is not a disease but rather a symptom of the natural inflammatory process. Childhood fevers frighten grownups. Fever is maligned and misunderstood.

Controversy surrounding the management of fever causes anxiety for parents, because they are not completely sure what to do when their child has one. It may help parents to remember that fever is only one part of the picture of an illness. In fact, for children under eight years of age, and especially for infants, the severity of a fever is an unreliable indicator of the severity of the child’s illness. For example, infants and toddlers can be very sick with a low or even subnormal temperature. Conversely, children three to eight years old can be running about quite cheerfully with a fairly impressive fever. The important thing is how your child is acting, not the thermometer reading. Fever is a built‐in mechanism of repair.

Can Fever Do Harm?
No one ever “burnt up” with fever; nor ever will. Heat a pan of water to 106° F, insert your finger and see how hot it is. Did you feel anything at all? The Journal of Clinical Therapeutics, tells us that: “Most authorities regard temperatures below 106° F as harmless and those over 108° as POTENTIALLY harmful.” Fever rarely produces serious complications. People have sustained fever as high as 114.8° F. without brain damage. Any time body temperature increases, salt and water are lost via sweating, and stores of energy and vitamins, especially the water‐soluble ones, are burned up. During moderate fevers, we can compensate for these losses by drinking appropriate fluids especially raw vegetable juices and purified water with unprocessed sea salt, ingesting nutritious foods, or taking vitamin supplements.

Replacing water‐soluble vitamins (chiefly C and B’s) makes sense. However, during fevers, the body makes some minerals unavailable for a good reason—bacteria need them to thrive. In terms of energy stores, our bodies switch from burning glucose (the favorite meal of bacteria) to burning protein and fat. This means a few days of poor appetite is probably adaptive. In other words, don’t cajole or coerce your children into eating during fevers if they don’t feel hungry, they will likely regain any lost weight quickly after the illness ends. You do, however, need to encourage fluids, because dehydration alone can drive up fever.

Fevers usually hit their highest point in the late afternoon. Conversely, kids often have their lowest temperature of the day early in the morning. So don’t panic at 4 p.m. when your child’s fever rises slightly; this does not necessarily forebode a raging fever. On the other hand, if your child has a low‐grade fever upon awakening, you may want to keep him home. Dr. O. P. J. Falk, Assistant Professor at St. Louis University School of Medicine, recently said: Fever represents an effort on the body to accelerate the metabolic processes...Any attempt to control fever artificially, is defeating natures purpose. Adre Lwoff, Nobel scientist, working at the Pasteur Laboratory Institute in Paris, concluded that FEVERS ARE GOOD TO HAVE and said that the indiscriminate use of aspirin or other antipyretic (fever reducing) drugs to bring down fever can be unwise; “that increased temperatures may well be the body’s most potent means of thwarting disease.”

A survey comparing attitudes of doctors, nurses and parents towards treating fevers in children reveals that parents tend to treat high temperatures much more aggressively than health professionals do. A low fever can actually benefit a sick child, and the researchers attributed parental tendencies to “fever phobia” — a fear that fever is harmful — which they say originated after the introduction of anti‐fever drugs like Tylenol. A group of Israeli researchers obtained their results from a questionnaire sent to more than 2,000 parents, doctors and nurses regarding fevers in children older than 3 months. The researchers defined fever as 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal body temperature, which is around 98.6 degrees.

The survey included questions on risks of fever, dosages of anti ‐fever drugs and when children should be treated. The investigators found that only 43% of parents knew that a fever below 100.4 degrees can be beneficial to a child, in contrast to 86% of the medical doctors and 64% of the nurses who responded to the survey.

The majority of parents also said they would treat a fever below 100.4 even if the child has no other symptoms, something with which only 11% of medical doctors agreed. A fever can actually help sick children. The body basically, is trying to do the right thing. Bugs like to live at body temperature. So if you raise the temperature, you kill them off. And contrary to what parents may believe the body can function very efficiently at temperatures as high as 100.5 degrees. While seizures from fevers are scary for parents, a previous study showed febrile seizures caused no long‐term neurological damage. In contrast, fever‐related seizures only occur at very high temperatures — around 108 degrees.

In the case of fever‐related seizures, parents should be more concerned that meningitis or bacteria in the blood may be causing the seizure than the child’s fever. Many mothers panic over fever in their children, but the truth is established in the following official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Pediatrics 66:1009‐1012, 12/81, reports febrile convulsions in childhood do not injure the CNS (central nervous system, brain and spinal cord). Febrile convulsions, meaning muscle twitchings from fever that are actually hypocalcemic tetany (low blood calcium muscle twitchings), do not cause brain damage or subsequent epileptic disorders. Kendig, Jr., et al, advise: “Phenobarbital prevents febrile seizures, but, causes side effects–disturbances in behavior, sleep patterns and short‐term memory in up to 40% of children–and will not prevent the development of epilepsy.” Therefore, its routine use is not recommended. “Neither Dilantin nor antipyretics (aspirin, Tylenol) prevent febrile seizures.”

How Fever Happens
Infections most commonly launch fever, especially in children. Other triggers include transfusion reactions, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, tumors, inflammatory reactions caused by trauma, medications (including some antihistamines, antibiotics, or an overdose of aspirin), immunizations, and dehydration. Most physicians do not believe that teething directly causes significant fever, but we have seen it happen. When infectious “bugs” stimulate white blood cells in a specific way, they release a substance called endogenous pyrogen, which signals the brain’s hypothalamus to raise the body’s thermostat setting. In turn, the body heats up by increasing its metabolic rate, shivering, or seeking warm environments. It also minimizes heat loss by restricting blood flow to the skin, giving it a pale appearance. Once body temperature rises, the skin flushes and sweats. A fever sufferer may lose appetite and feel lethargic, achy, and sleepy. When these phenomena happen to our children, we just tuck them into bed and let them sleep.

A basic fever, one due to minor bacterial or viral illness, can be an expression of the immune system working at its best. Given that most animals (vertebrates anyway) mount a fever in response to illness, it’s likely that humans have preserved this evolutionary response because it improves survival. Some research supports this theory; animal studies show when fever is blocked, survival rates from infection decline. Fever increases the amount of interferon (a natural antiviral and anticancer substance) in the blood. A mild fever also increases the white blood cells that kill cells infected with viruses, fungi, and cancer, and improves the ability of certain white blood cells to destroy bacteria and infected cells. Fever also impairs the replication of many bacteria and viruses. Bottom line: A moderate fever is a friend, but not one you want to spend a lot of time with. So it makes sense to avoid suppressing moderate fevers with drugs, while continuing to monitor your child for dramatic increases in temperature and worsening of any other of his symptoms.

Hypocalcemic Tetany
Hypocalcemic tetany –febrile convulsions as a result of low blood calcium–occurs when the blood plasma calcium is decreased 50% from normal, –Textbook of Physiology, Zoethout and Tuttle. Ionized calcium means free, uncombined in the ionic form. The ionic form means the element carries electrical charges, making it compatible for combining with elements carrying the opposite charge. In turn, Ca++ denotes a calcium source with a valence (combining power) of “2”, and the “++” means it will combine with elements with 1 or more negative charges. Fever is the purposeful elevation of body temperature specifically to release stored Ca++ from bone reserves. However, it is much better to supply Ca++ in the diet rather than withdrawing it from bones.
Dunking a small child in warm water is a method used over the years for stopping febrile convulsions. Obviously, the increased temperature supports the fever in releasing Ca++ to the circulation. Febrile seizures have become more of a problem since the advent of milk pasteurization. Heated milk loses much of its available free calcium as heating alters the solubility, absorption and availability of Ca++. Inflammation, erroneously called infection, is the biochemical repair mechanism, which requires increased ionized calcium (Ca++) for two reasons:

1. The matrix or ground substance being laid down in the repair or replacement of cells requires Ca++ for the reticular network (basic or foundation lattice‐work of connective tissue), the substance of primary importance.
2. The ability of phagocytes (special white blood cells that engulf foreign matter in the body) to carry out phagocytosis is dependent upon available Ca++ in the cytoplasm of the phagocytic leucocyte.
   No Ca++, no phagocytosis.

Naturally, the tissues must have a proper supply of oxygen and the uninterrupted mechanism for eliminating carbon dioxide along with water in physiological purity and equilibrium and the vena/lymphatic system for disposal of metabolic wastes. With vitamins, minerals, trace elements and amino acids–in proper form and in proper synergistic balance–the body’s cells can synthesize all needed enzymes required for normal cellular metabolism. Calcium lactate with magnesium citrate in a 5 to 1 ratio is regarded as a good supplement to overcome and/or prevent hypocalcemic tetany or febrile seizures.

One can dissolve two, four or more tablets in 1 or 2 oz. of non‐fluoridated, non‐chlorinated water over a period of 3 to 6 hours, mix with an equal amount of orange juice, and administer as often as needed. Fresh squeezed orange juice is preferable, but canned, bottled or frozen orange juice may be used as well. Prepared juices are fixed acids–and in the emergency situation, actually enhances Ca++ absorption. Barring interference with stage one and stage two of the inflammatory repair process, the final stages can proceed to completion.

The third stage–initiated by chemotaxis–is the macrophage and neutrophil response—the attraction of the phagocytes—the polymorphonuclear leukocytes, along with the local area macrophages, begin their scavenger work of cleaning up the wastes in the inflamed area. A macrophage is a highly phagocytic cell (like little pac‐man scavengers), lying in the walls of blood vessels. They are also called adventitial cells, histiocytes and phagocytic reticular cells. They are normally stationary but when stimulated by inflammation, become both active and mobile. Macrophages are considered the primary force of repair as the macrophage activity is seen during the first hour following inflammation; the circulating neutrophils (neutrophilic granulocytes or polymorphonuclear leukocytes) increase four or five times (15,000 to 25,000 per cubic millimeter of blood). Like macrophages, neutrophils migrate to the injured tissue and, like scavengers, remove dead and foreign matter from the area being repaired by the inflammatory activity.

When these two types of cells engulf foreign matter such as dead or necrotic tissue, they themselves eventually die—leaving a residue of pus. The residue or pus is a mixture of dead macrophages, dead neutrophils and digested and undigested portions of necrotic tissue. So, the first and second phagocytic cell response to inflammation involves macrophages and neutrophils. The third line of defense in this phagocytic area is the monocytes. Monocytes are called immature nongranulocytes. Monocytes and tissue macrophages are the same cell in different guises.

The cells that line sinusoids in the spleen, liver and lymph nodes derive from the same monocyte‐macrophage pool. Even though monocytes are called immature white cells and are initially not capable of phagocytosis, after 8 to 12 hours in the area of inflammation, monocytes swell and develop increased quantities of lysosomes–bags of enzymes of digestion, which make monocytes now capable of phagocytosis. In performing a phagocytic challenge for evaluating the efficiency of phagocytic leukocytes from donors, the following results were noted: (1) After ingestion of 10 grams of sucrose, phagocytosis efficiency (PE) was reduced about 30%. (2) After ingestion of sugared coffee and one donut, PE was reduced approximately 50%. (3) After ingestion of cherry pie a‐la‐mode, PE was reduced about 70%. (4) After 10 days on antibiotics PE was reduced 80%.

The final stage of the biochemistry of inflammation is the repair by connective tissue –organized by lymphocytes. After the phagocytic clean‐up, the remaining types of white blood cells (lymphocytes), in concert with neurological and enzymatic reactions, organize the repair or replacement of various cells toward tissue restoration–an invasion of granulation tissue begins. This granulation tissue results from the proliferation of fibroblasts and vascular endothelial cells (small blood vessels). During the repair, microscopic studies reveal that macrophages continue their phagocytic activity within the edematous granulation tissue.
Note that, also present are neutrophils, which are phagocytic, and eosinophils, which are weakly phagocytic lymphocytes. Smith and Thier, Pathophysiology, tells us: “The process of phagocytosis is very elegant. This process requires energy, which is provided by glycolysis and can take place in the absence of oxygen.” Obviously, no assistance required. Their design is so ingenious, that should man in his warped wisdom attempt to destroy these essential microbial producers of dead‐cell dissolving enzymes with the administration of antibiotics and/or steroid hormones, through cellular adaptations for survival, they alter their morphology or structural design in order to resist the chemical assaults of “homo sapiens, educated beyond their intelligence.” Perhaps the body says, “Better a tumor than no tissue at all.”