Why is medicine used to treat symptoms which are our body's way of telling us something is wrong?

Question

If symptoms are our bodies way of saying that something is wrong and needs to be attacked/fixed, why do we take medicines to suppress our symptoms? Doesn't that negate the point of having the symptoms? This questions is geared towards more mild symptoms like the cold, not life threatening symptoms which must be addressed for a persons livelihood or basic life.

Answer 1

The basic answer to this question is simply to make ourselves more comfortable. Like you mentioned, our body displays pain or symptoms to let us know something is wrong (often called self-limiting). However, say we're talking about the common cold: you realistically can't be off of work for 7-10 days every time you get a cold, you'd never get anything done! However, by taking over-the-counter medications like Mucinex and Sudafed, we can alleviate our symptoms enough to make them tolerable to carry on with our daily lives. When speaking of symptoms like a fever, however, we take medication like Tylenol because prolonged high fevers can damage our cell membranes and denature proteins and enzymes, leading to long-term effects like seizures and kidney failure. Our body requires very strict temperature parameters to function adequately and once a fever occurs, it can have widespread, systematic effects.