Pyrexia
Pyrexia is not nice. That’s my feeling, as someone who currently has it.
Pyrexia is elevated body temperature, i.e. a fever. Symptoms include feeling cold when nobody else does (yep), shivering (yep, doing that), lack of appetite (just tried to eat a little something but couldn’t I bring myself to do it), dehydration (I’m trying to drink, but it’s hard, you know?), lethargy (oh yes), problems concentrating (we’ll see how long it takes to write this), and sleepiness (yep).
There are other symptoms but these are the ones I’m presenting. My wife would add to the list the symptom of mumbling nonsense, but I’m not sure how official that one is.
Then of course there’s an actual measurement of elevated temperature, kind of a give-away. I have that one too.
The body’s normal temperature lies in the range 36.1 degrees Celsius to 37.2 degrees Celsius. People generally go with 37 degrees as being normal. Of course, body temperature fluctuates during the day. You’re at your ‘hottest’ around 6pm and ‘coolest’ around 3am.
So why do we develop fevers? It’s your body’s way to combat a bacterial or viral infection. Viruses have a protein coat called a capsid. Their (limited) genetic material is enclosed inside the capsid. “Hmm,” says your body, “how to break down that protein coat? Oh I know – heat.”
Heat denatures the structure of proteins, i.e. breaks them down. Bye-bye bad guy, be it virus or bacteria.
More specifically, heat increases kinetic energy and causes molecules to vibrate rapidly and violently. This disrupts hydrogen bonds and non-polar hydrophobic interactions of the secondary and tertiary protein structure. But then this isn’t a biochemistry lesson – I’ll save that for my students tomorrow if I make it into school (at this stage, doubtful).
Of course this takes time. It can also be dangerous if the temperature becomes too great, because that can also start to denature your own proteins – not a good situation.
So yeah, that’s where I’m at. Thoroughly annoyed at the stupid turn of events and mentally well-wishing my body’s defence mechanism. Come on body, let’s beat this thing...