DR. SUSAN JEWELL: Hello. My name is Dr. Susan
Jewell, and on behalf of Expert Village today, I'm going to talk to you about ways to treat
fevers and how to reduce the symptom of fevers. Now in this clip, we're going to talk about
when you have a fever, of course, you are going through bouts of high--of perspiring
and sweating. So, to cool down the body's temperature, there are many ways. One is to,
of course, to give a sponge bath, and what I would demonstrate here is just ways to do
just sponge down, or where you can put the sponge bath. Now, the thing is you just get
a bowl of water, and it's good to get it cold, icy cold water because, of course, the person
that's undergoing the fever is at a high--the body is very--at a very high temperature,
already abnormally high so you want to reduce that. So, ice water, and then what you do
is you can--if you can, you can add some aromatherapy oil into the water 'cause that will also help
to relax the person when they're going through bouts of temperature and fever at the time.
So, you just get a cloth and nice, icy cold water, and you can throw in some chunks of
ice as well to keep it cold, and just soak the towel in there, give it a nice rinse out
so it's nice and icy cold, and then you can just pat this on the person, so it's good
fold it up and put it into some hand-size, and then you just place it. First of all,
the most good place is, of course, the forehead, and then the areas, of course, that would--you
could use to sponge down is the neck area because--and placing it on the major arteries
that supplies the head area, and that is the carotid and the jugular, which are on both
sides of the neck, so you can press and you can wipe down that area of the body, and that
will help to reduce the temperature significantly, and also the armpits and all over the body.
Now, the important thing is that when you are wiping and sponging down the person at
that particular area, you should make sure you cover up the other exposed area. So, don't
expose a large area of the body to the atmosphere. So, always cover up and only sponge down that
particular area. Once you're finished sponging down, then you cover the area again. Then,
you move to another, expose another region. So, that's important because the person, if
they have very high fevers, especially, if they got caught flu--viral flu they got the
"shake and bake." So, you need to be aware of that. So, this is one of the ways that
you can actually help to reduce, temporarily anyway, to alleviate some of the symptoms
of fever.