I've only seen the documentaries, which were interesting.

To be honest I don't know if we do take medicine to reduce our body temperature :-| Not for things like colds and flus anyway

Wise people don't. They keep themselves as warm as possible and drink a lot of fluids to replace the water lost as sweat.

The medicine you take actually increases your temperature dramatically during the first hour or two that you take it, and then it makes it cool off faster.

FACT.


Actually, I don't know. Wise people do as Menacen said, keep bundled up and drink fluids.

Well, even Advil and Tylonel are advertised as 'fever reducers'. Reducing your fever doesn't sound like a good thing, according to this book.

Live with the fever up to 102 deg F. Above that, take something to control the fever.

And never dismiss the placebo effect.

i usually drink a liter of water/sports drink put on my warmest pjs and heaviest blankets and sweat the mother out.

I usually take medicine and spend the day in bed if I can't do anything else, or I do basically everything else except spending the day in bed.

We as a society do a lot of things with medicine that do much less to help our bodies fight the illness and more to control the symptoms to make ourselves more comfortable.

The only real reason to reduce the fever is that it becomes dangerouse when it is above 102, especially in Adults. But consider we also take decongestants, which effectivly removes one of your bodies means of disposing of germs.

You should take expectorants, never decongestants unless it is to help you sleep once a day. Usually it is best in a cough syrup. Expectorants break up the decongestant and make looser so it flows more.

Embrace the fever! Unless its hemorrhagic.

proteins denature, loose function, agregate and eventually kill a cell in high temps. there is a whole set of proteins (heat shock proteins) dedicated to sequestering unfolded proteins so they don't get destroyed and can refold once temperatures have been reduced. however, because of the variety of secondary structures in protein some will denature at higher temperatures than others (there is dna polymerase (a protein that copies dna) from bacteria that lives in thermal vents who's ability to not denature in extreme temperatures has been the key to a lot of modern biochemistry and molecular biology. with out it there would be no PCR). ANYWAY, the point is, because bugs are a small number of cells, it's possible they would die before a human would (or it's possible they have not had the necessary pressures to evolve proteins that can survive high temps). The idea is to get hot enough that you kill the bug, but not so hot that you kill yourself. that's why people with extreme fevers have to take ice baths etc.