Changing your body temperature is part of that equation.
“It’s a sign your body is initiating a good immune response.” What Causes Post-COVID Vaccine Chills?Īs your immune system learns how to respond to COVID, it sends out its arsenal to fight against the new threat. Vivek Cherian M.D., an internal medicine physician, tells Bustle. “The fact that your body is having side effects after your COVID vaccine, such as headaches, fevers, chills or body aches, is a good thing,” Dr. But having the post-vaccine chills isn’t a bad thing.
“It’s like the fifth day of the flu,” Angelica, 28, who received the AstraZeneca vaccine in the U.K., where it’s authorized, tells Bustle. Shivers are a known side effect of several COVID vaccines, including Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca (which is not authorized in the U.S.). They believed in eating according to the seasons to maintain health, because then we benefit most from the food’s desirable effects and lessen the impact of the undesirable effects.You’ve got your first vaccine dose, absolutely buzzing with the prospect of immunity - and then spend the night wracked by chills so severe you feel like you’re in a snow drift. The ancient Chinese discovered long ago that timing is critically important when choosing food and medicine. For example, if we eat watermelon on a hot summer day, it can help us weather the heat, but if we eat the same watermelon on a cold winter day, it is likely to cause indigestion and stomach cramps.
If we eat foods in the wrong season, we have a higher chance of experiencing undesirable effects from them. It’s not that the Tylenol has changed, but rather that its side effect, which is normally undesired, has now become the desired therapeutic effect. Using our original example, although Tylenol #3’s therapeutic effect is to lessen pain and its side effect is constipation, a doctor may well prescribe it to a patient who suffers from chronic diarrhoea. To benefit most from the therapeutic effects and minimize the side effects of a drug, proper timing is required. Even water – the source of all life on earth – can have an undesirable effect: while large amounts of water can save a dehydrated patient, too much water in some cases can lead to water poisoning. However, everything in the universe has two opposite sides both the desirable and the undesirable effects are part of the total package. Many people believe that food grown naturally and organically must be totally healthy. We tend to think of side effects only in relation to chemical drugs, but this is not the case. Tylenol #3 is made of codeine and acetaminophen, not of a “therapeutic” portion and a “side effect” portion. But we separate the effects into two groups so that we can compare the opposing actions of the drug. There is, in fact, no difference between therapeutic and side effects both are effects of the drug. When we use Tylenol #3 to treat a patient, these two opposite effects are always bound together and cannot be separated, even though we can cut the tablet into two, three, four, or a hundred parts. Although we can separate a drug’s effects as being either therapeutic or side effects, we cannot physically separate the drug into two such portions. A drug’s therapeutic effect is a desired effect for treating a disease, while a drug’s side effect is an undesired effect on the patient.įor example, the therapeutic effect of Tylenol #3 is to ease pain, and the side effect is to cause constipation. The ideas “therapeutic effect” and “side effect” are opposite concepts in medicine.