Is Bathing Advisable When You Have Fever?

We have lived in an idea that whenever you have a fever, you should take in oral medicines like ibuprofen and follow it with sponge bath or a complete bath to treat it, but there has been an interesting debate on how treating your fever will not help at all.

According to How Stuff Works, fever is a defense mechanism that is controlled by the brain's hypothalamus. By increasing the body temperature, we can get rid of those high-temperature sensitive viruses and bacteria that causes the infection. If this is the case then why do we need to treat fever?

Now, the medical consensus has changed from "treating the fever" to "lowering or reducing the fever." One fact that everyone should know is that "a high fever can't kill a person but the underlying illness or virus that causes the fever will."

Now, since it's not recommended to treat your fever totally, can reducing the temperature by taking a bath a good idea or will it do harm? It's a concern posted in many Q&A sites but answers are conflicting with each other coming from different individuals and experts.

Here are some answers to commonly asked questions about fever:

1.      An answer provided by Parents.com says giving the child a bath while he/she his sick and experiencing chills won't do any good. It will only make him shiver more. Most of the time, fever shouldn't be treated. The reason why the body is chilling is to increase the body temperature to kill the virus. The only advisable time to lower the temperature is when the fever is too high which is over 104 degrees F that can possibly cause seizures. If a high fever is recurring, it's better to seek a doctor's help to check if there are any underlying health conditions that cause it.

2.      Another helpful answer is from Healthy Home Economist, saying that bathing with warm water is a way to induce fever artificially, This process is called "Fever therapy or Fever Bath." When your body temperature heats up, it can speed up the process of healing a viral or bacterial infection. This is commonly advised when a person has an illness like cough and colds but not experiencing any fever at all. This is not advisable on young children and pregnant women.