When you have a fever, some people feel cold while others feel hot. This difference is related to individual constitution and the disease contracted. There are mainly four situations regarding different sensations of cold and heat.
1. Feeling cold with fever: You feel cold but your body temperature is high, and covering yourself with blankets or adding clothing hardly alleviates it. This is mostly caused by infectious diseases such as upper respiratory infections, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, and gastrointestinal infections in their early stages. Once this occurs, it’s best to seek medical attention promptly.
2. Only feeling cold without fever: You only feel cold without having a fever, and adding more clothing can relieve it. If accompanied by pale complexion and cold limbs, it often indicates chronic physical weakness. It's recommended to keep warm regularly, eat less cold food, or drink some warming tonics. If you feel local coldness and pain, it may be due to sudden illnesses like being frozen stiff from cold exposure, requiring immediate warmth and removal of coldness.
3. Only feeling hot without cold: You only feel hot and don’t fear the cold. One situation is high-grade fever: Persistent high fever, commonly seen in severe stages of pneumonia, bacillary dysentery, and urinary tract infections, accompanied by flushed face, thirst, and profuse sweating. In addition to cold compresses and hydration, the patient should be sent to the hospital quickly. Another situation is tidal fever: If you have a fever in the afternoon or at night, characterized by five-heart heat (heat in palms, soles, and chest), along with night sweats, red cheeks, and dry mouth, it might be due to tuberculosis or menopausal syndrome; if the fever only occurs in the afternoon with not very high body temperature, the problem might be in the spleen and stomach, accompanied by symptoms like chest tightness and nausea. In this case, one should consume light and easily digestible foods, avoid raw, cold, greasy foods, and get medical treatment. The third situation is low-grade fever: Not very high fever (not exceeding 38 degrees Celsius) or only subjective fever, commonly seen in yin deficiency tidal fever and qi deficiency fever, suggesting the use of Chinese medicine for regulation.
4. Alternating chills and fever: Cold and heat alternate in occurrence. If it happens irregularly, it's often seen in Shao Yang syndrome, and if it happens regularly, it's mostly malaria or could also be due to qi stagnation. Among them, malaria should be treated in the hospital.