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by babuskov
2733 days ago
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I didn't downvote you, but you seem to lack experience/knowledge on the topic if you think it's only a painkiller. Ibuprofen's main use is to help to keep the body temperature in check. When your body temperature goes too high you can lose consciousness and even die. I had a very high fever once and didn't want to take any medicine until I started to lose consciousness and I almost fell while waiting in a line in pharmacy. I was able to go through it only because I was adult. Children are more fragile. Fever is the reason people died so much before discovery of antibiotics. You are right that it alleviates the symptoms, and it's actually better not to use it when the temperature is moderate because high temp kills some germs. But if it goes too high, you have to stop it before it's too late. |
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I thought bacterial infections were the response were the reason people died before antibiotics. Fever is the body's response to infection, a primitive means of fighting it. If somebody has a serious infection and you give them anti-fever medication but no antibiotics, they're still at serious risk of death even if their fever goes away.
According to the first article I found while Googling: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/well... :
"The best evidence suggests that there is neither harm nor benefit to treating a fever with fever-reducing medications like acetaminophen or ibuprofen."
"In 1997, these data led to a large, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of ibuprofen in 455 patients with sepsis, a life-threatening infectious condition. In this study, ibuprofen failed to prevent the worsening of sepsis and failed to decrease the risk of death."
So there's no evidence that such drugs actually stop fever "before it gets too late" in adults, as they don't reduce risk of death. I had wrongly assumed the same applies to children.