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The chills, the sweats…fevers not only feel terrible; they also make the body work hard! For every two degrees Fahrenheit your temperature goes up, your heart rate increases ten percent. Why does the body go through such laborious misery when we're sick?
畏寒，出汗...發燒不僅讓人感覺難受，還讓身體負擔更重！體溫每增高2華氏攝氏度，心率就提高百分之十。為什么生病時，身體會經歷這樣痛苦的折磨呢？
The good news is that there is a method to fever's madness. Fever helps the body fight infection by revving up the immune system. Turn up the heat in the body, and many body processes speed up, including the production of white blood cells and how fast they find infectious bacteria and viruses. Once there, white blood cells called macrophages gobble up infectious organisms.
但令人欣慰的是，發燒是一種對付感染的好方法。發燒通過加速免疫系統來幫助身體抵抗感染。體溫上升，許多機體運作加速，包括促進白細胞的產生以及快速發現感染性細菌或病毒。一但發燒，一種稱作“巨噬細胞”的白細胞便會吞噬病原體。
Although higher body temperatures might kill some bacteria or viruses, fevers help us most by boosting the body's own immune response.
盡管高溫會殺死一些細菌和病毒，但發燒對身體最大的益處在于提高人體自身的免疫反應。
Fevers are such valuable responses to infection that creatures all along the evolutionary scale get them. That includes friendly neighborhood dogs and cats, as well as critters you might not expect, such as insects and lizards.
發燒是對感染的一種反應，它是如此的寶貴，進化史上所有生物均具有這一特點。這些生物包括與人類友好的鄰居——貓和狗，以及其它你想不到的動物，例如昆蟲和蜥蜴。
In a lab, after a lizard is injected with live bacteria, it will creep under a heat lamp in order to raise its body temperature. That's not so different from piling on the blankets when you've got the feverish chills!
在實驗室中蜥蜴被注射活細菌之后，為了提高身體的溫度它會在熱燈下爬行。這與你發燒打寒顫時拉毛毯來蓋無本質差異。
Because fever revs up our immune response, reducing fever with medication could make the infection last an extra day. But when you're feeling miserable, the tradeoff's probably worth it!
因為發燒加速我們的免疫反應，所以用藥物退燒會讓感染多持續一天。不過當你感覺痛苦，也許用藥退燒也是值得的。
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