This book is a public service announcement. Discover the power of your natural immunity. Learn why we should allow our bodies to run their intelligent health maintenance programs, including those of the immune system. As they are more effective at eliminating invaders than any military on earth. You will discover that fever is an essential part of the immune response, and is found throughout the animal kingdom. I'm talking hamsters, rats, guinea pigs, lizards, gators, crabs, scorpions, grasshoppers, lobsters, beetles, leeches, snakes, snails, mice, monkeys, fish, ferrets, baboons, and even my beloved bees.
Learn how hard our bodies work to maintain our body temperature, and what happens when our internal thermostat intelligently and purposefully shifts up the heat. The fever response has developed over a very long time, slowly perfecting its orchestral brilliance. I'll share stories of bees who make an effort to fever together, lizards who lounge around trying to get a fever, kids who've had chickenpox longer because they took antipyretic medicines, and, people whose cancer completely disappeared after a fever.
Until the late 1800s, fever was widely considered a healthy sign during disease. This has changed with fever-lowering drugs now the knee-jerk reaction worldwide. When people feel lousy, achy, tired, hot, and miserable, the idea of taking medication and interfering with this process is pretty compelling. They simply want to get rid of the nasty, noxious feeling that comes with fever. But this may not be wise.
We will establish what happens biochemically during an infection and how can we actually use fever therapeutically and harness it for our benefit. This is not a new idea, as fever therapy has been used for a long time, with sometimes incredible results. Like with the malarial fevers used to treat neurosyphilis that won Dr. Julius Wagner-Juaregg the 1927 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology, and the cancer treatments of Dr. William Coley (who used bacteria) and Dr. Nina Klyuyeva (who used a parasite).
We've really come a long way in our understanding of the immune system in the last few decades. Since the turn of the 21st century, the scientific and medical communities have rapidly accelerated research in this field, with exponential growth since 2000. In 2020 alone, the FDA approved fifteen new immunotherapy treatments.
I'm happy to be sharing this important, age-old knowledge, especially at this time in the world. Inspired by the tireless efforts of the scientific and medical communities, I'm optimistic that this book will help spark conversation and change. Trust the wisdom inherent in your body, arm your immune system, and share the incredible power of the fever response. Because when we honour our bodies, we can be sick less, get better faster, and live healthier lives.