I remember getting fevers as a child, feeling chills-heat and laying around not being able to do anything. On some of these feverish occasions, I recall having the urge to use the bathroom, closing my eyes as it felt so strenuous to stand up to walk to the bathroom, then dreaming of having gone to the bathroom, only to open my eyes to find that I had not moved from the spot I had laid down on. My parents would do the same routine; take my temperature, put a moist, cool towel on my forehead, make me drink fluids and at some point, give me a paracetamol to lower the fever. Most times it worked; the fever would drop and after maybe some other symptoms, like sore throat or cough, resolved, I was back doing my normal day activities. What we never asked was what exactly is a fever, why they occur or if there are other ways to work with fever.

Since having my own children and my training in natural medicine, I have become more knowledgeable and comfortable with fevers. I believe this is one of the most feared symptoms that parents have for their children. Often many parents have had their own negative experience with fever and coupled with their fear, they end up at the hospital emergency room with their child, where a whole triage of events will occur; these can sometimes be traumatic for child and parents. Fevers are however a common and natural occurrence in the life of a human being; in fact, in science fevers are viewed as an evolutionary trait developed over 600 million years in both vertebrates and invertebrate life forms on Earth.

If you ever came in contact with a child, or remember your own childhood, you will experience fevers. It is part and parcel of growing up. As a parent, I realized that my instinct to protect my children, created a sense of wanting to take the discomfort of fever away from them. This however is a fallacy; it is a natural process of the body to “train” the immune system and the whole body for growth. I studied Chinese Medical methods to reduce fever, with Acupuncture and Chinese Herbs, but really knowing when to apply them came with experience of being a parent. As a parent to young children, I came to read a book of Natural Medicine, Wickel und Co., about using traditional healing methods like compress. This book’s section on fevers provided me with an understanding that I am very thankful for. I remember reading that children can have fevers for different reasons, not just due to infections. This can also be due to growth, teething, excitement or stress. After reading this and observing my kids, I realized this was true. I recall my eldest son was ill from a stomach-intestinal virus just before his 1st birthday. He had a fever, thrown-up, had diarrhea for almost a week and when finally the day of his birthday came, with all the guests outside celebrating his birthday, he was lying in bed sleeping. But the next year, he was healthy before his birthday, no fever or illness; the birthday celebration came and went, which he enjoyed a lot. The next day, he had a fever and we stayed home to rest. After half a day of sleep, he was up and about playing, with a slightly elevated temperature of 37.5 degrees Celsius, which resolved and he was fully healthy the next day. This surprised me, but it made me aware that even excitement could raise a body temperature in a child. But what most surprised me was on both occasions, he lost a little more of his “baby cheeks,” grew another few centimeters and developed another growth milestone over the coming weeks and months. I learned then to back-off from “doing;” just wait, observe, support and then act when needed. My children have used very little pharmaceutical medicine for fevers through their childhood.

I find this categorization of fevers by Swetha, Karlie, Shumway and Shweta very clear:

•  Low-grade: 37.3 to 38.0 C (99.1 to 100.4 F)
• Moderate-grade: 38.1 to 39.0 C (100.6 to 102.2 F)
• High-grade: 39.1 to 41 C (102.4 to 105.8 F)
• Hyperthermia: Greater than 41 C (105.8 F)

My first course of action was to get my children to rest, provide lots of fluid, take their temperature regularly to assess if the fever was rising and observe how they were doing as well as what time of the day it was. If it was low-grade, I would just do the above. If it was evening (fevers tend to rise later in the evening and night) after 7 pm, and the fever was over 38.5 degrees Celsius (moderate-grade), then I would act by doing acupuncture to clear the heat, do a vinegar-water compress on the calves and provide fluids throughout the night. If it was high-grade fever at any time of the day, I would act immediately with Acupuncture and compresses, not waiting. Often times, the fever would subside by morning. Both my children have never been to a Western medical doctor for fevers. We have learned to respect the body’s own healing capacity and help it to do what it needs to do with natural and herbal methods.

Looking at fevers alone and not paying attention to the rest of the body is counterproductive. There is a reason why the body is mounting a fever, therefore, observing the rest of the body is essential to helping the healing process. Often times all we need to do is just be present with our children and let their bodies do what they need to do.
 


Reference
Swetha Balli; Karlie R. Shumway; Shweta Sharan (2023) : Physiology, Fever:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK562334/ (accessed on 30.10.2024)



Image by Victoria on Pixabay

We will soon be experiencing the second new moon after the Winter Solstice; it is the Chinese New Year. We will enter into the year of the Metal Ox. It is a Spring celebration, the returning of life after the death of the land in winter. There are many symbols used in this celebration; the animal that the year represents, the color red, the plum blossoms, fish...this got me thinking. Why fish? Some believe that it has to do with the sound of the word in Mandarin; the word for fish, "yú," is also the sound used for the word "abundance." Hence, the fish is often pictured as a pair or more, double or more abundance, and is eaten for the new year. I believe that it goes even deeper than that and it is not just in the Chinese culture but across cultures of the earth. The fish is a symbol of life, abundance, fertility. Part of the reason for this is that fish live in water and water is the medium for life on earth, as I discussed a few posts ago. 
 
For a long time now, I have been interested in finding out more about evolution. What most of us know as evolution is based on the Darwinian Theory of Natural Selection; it is often summarized as "Survival of the Fittest;" pictured as a few figures moving/ progressing from left to right, ape to primitive human to upright Homo sapiens of today. However, there are other theories of evolution not just the Darwinian one, which proposes that an organism that best adapts to its environment will survive and reproduce. When Charles Darwin published his work "The Origin of the Species" in 1859 he was doing so after Alfred Russell Wallace, a younger, less experienced and less financially-stable naturalist/ geologist, among other things, had written Darwin to describe similar ideas of species evolution in his travels in the Amazon and South-East Asia a year prior. Darwin and his associates decided to publish Darwin's work before someone else, such as Wallace did. Hence, we associate evolution with Darwin, not Wallace. In fact, there are other ideas of evolution that pre-date Darwin but were not accepted by society or the scientific community of the time. One such individual is Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a French zoologist, who published his findings and hypothesis almost 60 years before Darwin, but was ridiculed by the French scientific community of his time for his bold hypotheses. One of his suggestions was the "inheritance of acquired characteristics," which states that an organism can acquire and pass on to its offspring characteristics or adaptations which it acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. Lamarck was not given credit for his work, even ridiculed and forgotten until now, about 200 years later.

"One reason some scientists are taking another look at Lamarck is that evolutionists are reminding us of the invaluable role cooperation plays in sustaining life in the biosphere. Scientists have long noted symbiotic relationships in nature." (Lipton, 2015)

New ideas and perspectives are emerging in science as well as in society. For so long, we were exposed to the idea that "only the fittest survive." Currently, more are realizing that the reason we humans have survived and thrived till this day is because we learned to cooperate with each other; banding together to stay warm; pitching our resources together to feed more over a longer period of time. We learned to live in symbiosis with other humans as well as other living beings and our environment, which one may dispute with the current state of affairs on the earth.      
 
My interest in evolution has revealed to me how everything on this planet, if not the universe, is related to one another. It has shown me how all vertebrates including humans were once fish. Click the link to watch a fascinating documentary on our inner fish ancestry. These creatures lived in oceans and over hundreds of millions of years, evolved to have limbs, that then transformed to hands with opposable thumbs which we have today; that allows us to create the reality we live in today. So maybe the Chinese are celebrating Chinese New Year with symbols of the fish not just as the beginning of a new year, but also as an honoring of the roots of our existence on earth.    
 
 
 
Reference
Lipton, Bruce H. (2015): The Biology of Belief - Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles. Carlsbad, USA: Hay House Inc.
 
 
 
Image Koi by endri nana nana on pixabay