Radiation damage pills.

[Saga]

Symptoms of the flu are not directly due to the virus- the sore throat, aches, fever, etc are caused by your immune system to get rid of the virus. Your body is willing to strafe bomb the cells of your throat to kill off virally infected epithelial cells for the long term greater good. In a similar way, cells that are only moderately damaged tend to adopt the better safe than sorry philosophy and just go apoptotic. Typically cells can be replaced, so why risk a damaged cell when you don't have to? Sometimes the body goes overboard- when people die of the flu it is because the immune system goes too far and the fever/dehydration/etc result in death. In this case, the body ends up killing off more cells than it can replace in a timely manner, and you die.

that's a really bizarre way to look at "symptoms," that's crazy...so when we associate say like, strep throat with a really bad cough, the cough isn't a direct cause of the virus? the cough comes from our cells killing off the infected cells in the throat area? if that's the case, that's wild, that means all the symptoms we associate with the names of illnesses and even the names of the illnesses themselves are shattered pretty much, no?

[Kuya]

Yea, most physiological reactions are inmunological reactions from the body's defenses. Inflamation, fever, sneezing, all of that is your body trying to get rid of viruses and bacteria and such. But this is pretty old knowledge, no?

[SephYuyX]

Yeah, are bodies are crazy; "Hey! Lets make a vaccine full of flu cells so we dont get the flu!"

[Saga]

Yea, most physiological reactions are inmunological reactions from the body's defenses. Inflamation, fever, sneezing, all of that is your body trying to get rid of viruses and bacteria and such. But this is pretty old knowledge, no?

oh im sure it's old knowledge, it's just new to me. i just thought that the actual flu gave you fever, sneezing, coughing, aches and pains, never knew it was the body's response that caused the supposed symptoms.

[Nystul]

Symptoms of the flu are not directly due to the virus- the sore throat, aches, fever, etc are caused by your immune system to get rid of the virus. Your body is willing to strafe bomb the cells of your throat to kill off virally infected epithelial cells for the long term greater good. In a similar way, cells that are only moderately damaged tend to adopt the better safe than sorry philosophy and just go apoptotic. Typically cells can be replaced, so why risk a damaged cell when you don't have to? Sometimes the body goes overboard- when people die of the flu it is because the immune system goes too far and the fever/dehydration/etc result in death. In this case, the body ends up killing off more cells than it can replace in a timely manner, and you die.

that's a really bizarre way to look at "symptoms," that's crazy...so when we associate say like, strep throat with a really bad cough, the cough isn't a direct cause of the virus? the cough comes from our cells killing off the infected cells in the throat area? if that's the case, that's wild, that means all the symptoms we associate with the names of illnesses and even the names of the illnesses themselves are shattered pretty much, no?

It's not really odd if you're in medicine because this is sort of old hat, but to most lay people it's kind of odd. Like how average people think of electricity as electrons moving towards something but physicists think of it as positive charge moving in the opposite direction.

Anyway, an unusual example is the spanish influenza outbreak in the early 1900's (around 1915 or so). The virus accelerated the immune system to a point at which your fever got so high that you sort of cooked your brain. The elderly and children, who have weak immune systems relatively, were almost untouched by the disease in terms of deaths, but normal "healthy" adults 20-45 or so died in immense numbers (the outbreak killed more people total than the plague did).

Physiology has a thing about balance- it craves it. And anything that messes with that balance can do a lot of harm.