A persistent feeling of uneasiness and sweating, along with a shiver down the spine, indicates that you one is experiencing a fever. A fever’s occurrence is pervasive and shared by everyone due to many factors such as a disease, a side-effect to a medication, or a change from one climate or season to the next.
As science and experts have backed it up, an occurrence of fever usually means that an individual’s body is trying to fight a disease or a health condition to protect itself from any harmful effects or consequences. The fever ranges from low to high, depending on the severity of the illness or a person’s health condition.
But what is precisely one understands by the term low-grade fever? How does its continuous existence in the body indicate the chances of a disease one is unaware of? A low-grade fever usually ranges between about 100.5°F and 102.2°F, and it is considered persistent if a person continues to experience it for two consecutive weeks.
It is not always that a low-grade fever is easy to be diagnosed, or it becomes easy to pick a reason due to which the fever is occurring again and again. Sometimes there are no symptoms or signs that indicate that a person has a fever, and he/she might not even feel any difference in their body.
So what are the probable reasons behind the cause of Low-Grade fever in a person?
The Causes of Low-Grade Fever
An overall understanding of why fever occurs is when the body is trying to fight an infection or an already prevailing disease, which leads to the heating of the body as it helps to make efforts in the system to prevent the disease from harming it.
Some of the probable reasons or issues that might cause persistent or low-grade fever include:
Urinary Tract Infection (UTI)
Urinary Tract infection refers to a condition when there is an infection due to bacteria’s development anywhere near the urinary tract, such as the kidney, ureters, bladder, etc. These bacteria multiply in the urinary area and form infection, which also results in a low-grade fever.
But it is not only the experiencing of low-grade fever but also other signs that indicate an infection. The other symptoms might involve; pain in the abdomen, burning sensation while peeing, dark urine, or a consistent urge to urinate.
In this case, treating the condition will lower the fever in a person for which the doctor first identifies specific antibiotics or the bacteria type.
Respiratory Infection
The respiratory infection mostly indicates the case of a cold or flu in which there always seems to be a moderately high temperature of the body, or one might say low-grade fever. One of the best examples of respiratory infection could be the present COVID situation where many symptomatic individuals have experienced fever, which is relatively consistent.
Along with persistent low-grade fever, these could be signs of; coughing, sneezing, running nose, loss of appetite, feeling of fatigue, etc. Mostly, cold ad flu kind of respiratory infection doesn’t require any specific treatment instead of just good care at home or any home remedies for recovery speed, which causes the fever to go away.
Medication-Related Fever
Sometimes any prescribed medications can have side-effects like a low-grade fever, which is usually mentioned in the medicine package in the side-effect section. It s best to already discuss with your doctor the side-effects of the medication one is consuming.
Usually, once the effect of the medicine vanishes, so does the side-effect like a low-grade fever, or once you stop consuming the drug, the fever would automatically stop occurring.
Stress or Severe Illness causing Fever
Stress is observed as a prime reason for low-grade fever in many people, and the only treatment, in this case, is managing stress or doing something for stress-buster. Other than that, sometimes low-grade fever occurs without any prominent visible reason or a cause that is not known.
These kinds of low-grade fever are categorized as a symptom of cancer. Other symptoms are experienced along with it, such as; fatigue, unexplained weight loss, weakness, weight loss, any infection, blood loss, etc. These symptoms don’t need to be related to cancer, but it is best to consult the doctor in such a case.
There are so many other infections that may lead to persistent low-grade fever. That is how naturally a body will react to foreign infecting bacteria entering the body. Other diseases are linked to low-grade fever, such as; food poisoning, liver infection, tuberculosis, etc.
Moreover, there are specific symptoms experienced by some and not in the others that reflect that a person is experiencing low-grade fever, such as:
- Shivers
- The body feels warm to touch
- Chills
- Body ache
- headache
- Sweating
- Feeling of Dehydration
Diagnosis and Treatment
A low-grade fever diagnosis is made by running some tests on the person to identify its cause and whether or not there is any infection that is causing the body to fight any bacteria or pathogen, eventually raising the body temperature.
A medical expert would ask for blood tests to analyze the complete body and observe it as part of the diagnosis and determine any prevailing health condition. The doctor might question you about any chronic disease, or any medication one is taking presently.
The treatment of low-grade fever is merely identifying the condition that is causing it. Hence, if there isn’t anything to be concerned about, they might disappear with specific measures such as drinking plenty of water to reduce dehydration or going for any over-the-counter medication that declines the fever symptoms.
But if the condition is severe, it’s best to consult a physician to identify the disease-causing low-grade fever accurately. But remember not to go for any over-the-counter medication for children as it might prove to have different side-effects on them. So it’s best at the end to consult a doctor for analyzing the precise condition or taking the advice from the pharmacist for choosing the right medication.
