To determine whether a baby's fever is serious, you should not just look at the body temperature, but also pay attention to the baby's mental state. 39 degrees is close to a high fever, and parents will be very worried when they see it. However, if the baby behaves the same as usual, can still eat, play, and claps his hands, sings and dances, then he may not even need to take antipyretics at this time. Just take good care of it at home.
But sometimes the baby's body temperature may be less than 39 degrees, but the mental state is particularly poor. At this time, the baby can be considered very uncomfortable and needs to use antipyretics to cool down in time, such as ibuprofen or acetaminophen. Both of these are antipyretic ingredients recommended by the World Health Organization for children and are safe and effective.
It should be noted that some parents may give their children cold medicine to reduce fever, or give their children less adult antipyretic medicine. This is a wrong approach. Because most cold medicines are compound preparations composed of several ingredients. Although they contain antipyretic ingredients, they have little antipyretic effect. Combining them with antipyretics will increase the risk of drug overdose. There are currently misunderstandings and unclear efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine for reducing fever. , combining Chinese medicine with other drugs may also increase the risk of over-medication; adult antipyretics are obviously suitable for adults rather than children. Therefore, it is more recommended to use single-ingredient children's antipyretics for children.
In addition, considering that children have an average of 2-3 fevers a year, and winter is the peak fever season and a potential outbreak period of influenza, it is recommended that parents keep ibuprofen or acetaminophen at home to reduce fevers in children. Medicine, just in case you need it.
Some parents worry that 39 degrees will burn out their brains. In fact, high temperature burning out the brain is related to the temperature and the duration. Only when the body temperature exceeds 42 degrees and continues for a long time will the human body's proteins begin to denature, causing direct damage to the brain!
Most of the things that affect intelligence and brain development are meningitis, or hypoxic brain lesions caused by constant spasms. This is due to the course of the disease itself, not the temperature; most of these diseases have symptoms of high fever that does not go away (even if the temperature is lower than 42 degrees). This leads to the common misconception that high fever will burn out the mind.
The basic way to identify the two is to look at the child's appetite and energy. In serious infections such as meningitis or sepsis, children will have poor appetite and activity, remain drowsy, and may also experience vomiting if cerebral pressure rises. Therefore, when a child has a fever, parents must "watch the child's behavior" and seek medical attention as soon as the above symptoms are discovered.