At this very moment, your body is making countless little decisions, and it all happens on autopilot. You don’t consciously make yourself shiver; it just happens.
And a lot of the time, whatever happens feels absolutely awful.
A runny nose, a fever that comes out of nowhere, an itch that doesn’t stop, a strange ache — none of that feels like a vacation. For most people, these are nothing but problems, and they’ll try to get rid of them ASAP. But almost every single annoying or uncomfortable thing you feel was a survival trick once.
What’s weird is that it makes you feel worse at first.
The Body’s Weird Safety Features
Our bodies do all sorts of things that seem like they shouldn’t be happening, when in fact they’re there to help.
Let’s go over some of them.
The Pain You Feel Is There for a Reason
When you feel pain, it means that your body is teaching you a lesson you need to learn to stay alive. For instance, if you touch something hot, you’ll feel a sharp pain right away and pull back before you injure yourself.
That pain is an alarm of sorts.
| Pain is our body’s biological response system, which protects us by triggering withdrawal/avoidance, thereby helping prevent any further harm. – National Institutes of Health |
There’s also delayed pain, like when you push yourself too hard at the gym and feel sore the next day. That’s your body telling you to rest first before you work out again.
Pain feels terrible, but you’re lucky it’s there.
Swelling Can Be a Good Thing
Swelling looks like an issue, but it’s actually one of the smartest ways your body reacts to an injury.
Let’s say you sprained an ankle; blood vessels will become wider to get the fluid faster into that area. And the reason why your body wants that extra blood is that it brings nutrients and oxygen, which are what it needs to repair itself.
| Inflammation helps with tissue repair/healing by increasing blood flow and immune cell activity. – National Institutes of Health |
The fluid carries immune cells that clean up the damage.
You’ll also feel stiffness, which is yet another smart response. Your ankle swells up, so you can’t move it as well, and that’s because your body wants to force you to rest it.
See? It’s all super smart.
A puffy ankle is a good thing.
The Colorful Clues Under Your Skin
When you bump into something or fall, you get a bruise. Those bruises come from broken blood vessels, which cause the blood to leak into the tissue around the vessels.
Pretty gross, but it’s nothing serious.
The blood that gets trapped in the tissue starts reddish or purple, then it becomes blue, then it goes green, yellow, and ends in brown. The colors tell you which part of the repair process you’re at, and if the bruise appears a few days later, it means the damage happened deeper inside. The blood just took some time to get closer to the surface.
| The breakdown of hemoglobin into biliverdin and bilirubin (during healing) is what gives color to bruises. – National Institutes of Health |
Doctors pay a good deal of attention to bruises, especially when an injury feels unexplained.
Unexplained bruises need to be closely examined and investigated because they could end up being a result of negligence, malpractice, or even abuse inside the facility, which would be alarming (to say the least).
Breaking the Rules to Fight the Germs
A fever is your body’s way to fight against infection.
Once germs get inside, the immune system releases chemicals that tell your brain to make your body hotter. That’s an oversimplified explanation, of course, but that’s the gist of it. The reason why temperature gets higher is that that’s what makes immune cells more active and aggressive, which means they can track and destroy germs much faster.
Also, a lot of viruses and bacteria absolutely despise warmth, so a fever can slow them down or even completely kill them.
That’s why mild to moderate fever is actually helpful, and you actually shouldn’t try to lower it right away.
If it’s above 140, that’s when things can get dangerous. We don’t want it to get to that point.
Your Body Wants a Timeout Sometimes
If you’re feeling wiped out after you get sick, that’s not something you should push through. Your body deliberately makes you feel like a truck ran over you because it wants you to slow down so your energy can go towards more important things (e.g., running a fever, fighting an infection, and so on).
Getting better takes a good deal of fuel, so if you run around and spend it, you can’t get better.
That’s why you feel sleepy and heavy when you get sick.
Sleep is especially important when you’re under the weather because that’s when your body heals best.
Conclusion
Well… It would seem our bodies are VERY complex machines. And sometimes, they’re a bit weird as well. Right? But you knew that already.
What’s a bit surprising and strange is how most things around our body that people perceive as ‘not good’ are actually very good for us. Who would’ve thought that a mild fever could be pretty good for us, and that we should always prioritize working out its own cycle instead of jumping towards ibuprofen?
As uncomfortable as you might be, many of the things you want to get rid of are helping you, so maybe now you can start to see bruises and swelling in a different light.
And perhaps you’ll try to sleep off that flu instead of pretending like you’re not sick?