Date: 24 Jun 2026
Topic: Science
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When we get sick, it's natural to assume that our symptoms are caused by the pathogen that has infected our body - whether it be a bacterial, viral, or fungal infection. In truth, the answer is quite the contrary.
Considering a standard symptom profile of congestion, headache, sore throat, cough, fever, aches, and chills, the only two that are directly caused by the illness are a sore throat and a cough. A sore throat and cough are clever ways for a virus to hijack your tissue for replication, using the cough as a mechanism for spreading as you force the replicated viral particles out of your body into the air to infect others.
For the rest of the symptoms, congestion is your body swelling the blood vessel networks around your sinuses to allow for increased blood flow and a supply of infection-fighting white blood cells. Mucus and snot production is your body's way of flushing out the infection, so that it can eventually be swallowed into the stomach acid for an untimely death. Your body uses a fever to elevate its internal temperature above the conditions the pathogen can survive in, while body aches and headaches can be attributed to the surplus production of infection-fighting signaling proteins called cytokines.
So, while your body makes you uncomfortable when fighting a sickness, it makes life even more uncomfortable for the infection in the hopes of eliminating it.