Chills are a subjective feeling of coldness, chilliness that occurs due to a sharp spasm skin vessels and a decrease in body temperature due to freezing. With chills, shivering, muscle tremors, and “goose bumps” occur.
Due to vasospasm in external environment Less heat is released, but the body creates more energy and heat as a result of muscle tremors. This warms the body from the inside and stabilizes body temperature. The chill goes away.
Most common cause chills are acute infectious diseases with increased body temperature (fever). At the very beginning of fever, chills occur as a result of spasm of small skin vessels, and then as the temperature rises, the chills disappear.
But sometimes chills appear without connection with fever and cold, in itself as a phenomenon or as a symptom various diseases and pathologies, injuries.
It is worth remembering that chills are not a disease, but a physiological reaction of the body to changes in temperature and changes in metabolism, it is a way of regulating thermogenesis (constancy of body temperature and heat production). Sometimes chills occur even with excitement, stress, overwork, low blood pressure, before or during menstruation in women, during pregnancy in the first trimester.
Causes of chills
The main cause of chills without fever is hypothermia and freezing of the body. At the same time, lips and fingernails turn blue, the skin of the face and body turns white, lethargy and weakness occur, and the temperature decreases.
In this case, you need to drink hot tea, take a warm bath, put on warm socks and clothes, and warm up. If this does not help, it is important to call doctors - perhaps hypothermia was deeper and stronger than you expected.
Chills can occur with high blood pressure, then it will be accompanied by weakness and headaches, chills in the area chest and hands. It usually occurs in evening time, after stress, is accompanied by a pronounced increase in blood pressure numbers. You need to calm down, take blood pressure medication or call ambulance. High pressure dangerous for cerebral hemorrhages and heart attacks.
Chills may be a sign of hormonal disorders during menopause, diabetes, or malfunction thyroid gland(hypothyroidism). Then a consultation with an endocrinologist and blood tests for hormone levels are necessary.
No less often, chills occur as a result of disorders in the digestive system - against the background of nausea or abdominal pain, as a result of metabolic disorders and autonomic innervation in the stomach and intestines.
Often chills without fever occur against the background of some indolent or chronic infections, such as tuberculosis or syphilis.
One of the rare, but most unpleasant reasons chills is Raynaud's disease - an intermittent vegetative spasm of the blood vessels of the hands, especially often occurring when temperatures change.
Chills can be a sign of internal bleeding, due to severe circulatory disorders and spasm of small blood vessels in the skin.
Chills often occur as a reaction to stress, extreme excitement, or emotional arousal. A glass of water, deep breathing and taking sedatives will help here.
Should chills be treated?
Chills in themselves are just a symptom of certain problems in the body. It does not need to be treated, the reasons that caused it must be eliminated.
In order to get rid of unpleasant subjective feelings, you need to wrap yourself in a blanket, take a warm bath or shower, drink hot liquid, and calm down. It is prohibited to consume alcohol for the purpose of warming and various drugs without the consent of the doctor.
Good day, dear readers!
In today’s article we will look at such an unpleasant symptom that accompanies many diseases as chills (trembling), as well as its causes, associated symptoms, treatment and prevention of chills. So…
What is chills?
Chills- a feeling of coldness and chilliness caused by spasms of skin vessels, which is also accompanied by trembling, and sometimes “goose bumps”. Trembling develops primarily in the muscles of the head ( masticatory muscles) backs, shoulder girdle and limbs.
Most often, the cause of chills is a disease of viral etiology, which is characterized by increased or high temperature bodies. Mild chills can occur during stress, fear and other emotional outbursts, but they usually pass quickly. Therefore, in all cases, chills are a symptom that tells us that something is happening to the body.
Chills are one of the protective functions body - with muscle spasms the body generates a large amount of energy, and accordingly heat, during which self-warming and normalization of body temperature occur.
Treatment of chills is aimed at removing its cause, therefore, when the body’s functioning is normalized - when the disease or external unfavorable conditions in which the person is located are removed, the chills go away on their own.
Chills. ICD
ICD-10: R50.0;
ICD-9: 780.64.
Causes of chills
Conventionally, chills are divided into 2 types – chills with fever and chills without fever. Among the reasons for their development are:
Chills without fever are caused by:
- finding the body in unfavorable climatic conditions, in the cold, and freezing of the body;
- diseases endocrine system: , ;
- , fright;
- hormonal changes – pregnancy;
- overwork;
- metabolic disorders;
- injuries.
Chills with fever are caused by:
- infections: and other diseases accompanied by elevated and high body temperature;
- Digestive disorders: , ;
- circulatory disorders, internal bleeding;
- other diseases: , Raynaud's disease.
Symptoms of chills
Depending on the cause of the chills, the following symptoms may accompany them:
- blue lips, nails (due to hypothermia);
- , malaise;
- constrained body movements, lethargy;
- , disturbances of consciousness, hallucinations;
Diagnosis of chills
Diagnosis of chills includes:
- Anamnesis;
Treatment of chills
What to do if you have chills, if you feel cold? As noted above, treatment of chills is aimed at eliminating its root cause. Thus, it can be noted following methods treatment of chills:
- Warm the body - dress well in warm clothes, wrap yourself in a blanket, drink hot tea, raspberries or milk, if not elevated temperature, take a warm bath or steam your feet in a basin.
- If you are emotionally unbalanced, you need to take deep breaths, drink a glass of water, depressant, for example tea with mint, sage;
- If, it is necessary to take a remedy for increased fever, when it normalizes, the chills will go away on their own;
- If chills are caused poor condition vessels, as for example with, then hardening procedures have proven themselves to normalize their work;
— For different infectious diseases(flu, etc.) it is recommended to drink plenty of fluids, which will help quickly remove infections from the body and, accordingly, normalize its condition.
Important! If you have chills, do not drink alcoholic beverages! Use medicines possible, but only after consulting a doctor.
Preventing chills
During the cold season, dress well and avoid hypothermia;
The body's thermoregulation primarily depends on external conditions, but can also be disrupted under the influence of various internal processes. As a rule, this is facilitated by infectious and inflammatory diseases accompanied by fever. But in some cases, chills without fever are observed - the reasons for this phenomenon in women are quite numerous, and include: pathological conditions, and completely normal physiological reactions.
Causes of chills without fever at night in women
Subjective feeling of cold and trembling in the body during sleep - typical symptom diabetes mellitus. This endocrine disease usually accompanied by excessive sweating, as a result of which the body cools down faster even under comfortable external thermal conditions.
Night chills without fever in women also occur due to other factors:
- depression and chronic stress;
- hypothermia the night before bedtime;
- long-term stress muscular system during the day;
- hyperhidrosis – excessive sweating, to the point of wet sheets;
- increased blood viscosity;
- tendency to thrombosis, including hemorrhoidal veins;
- osteochondrosis and joint inflammation;
In addition to trembling, the listed problems are accompanied by others unpleasant symptoms, for example, irritability, pain syndrome, myalgia.
Causes of chills and nausea without fever
In most cases, the clinical manifestations under consideration are characteristic of cardiovascular pathologies. They are often combined with sudden jumps in blood pressure, which provokes rapid expansion and narrowing of capillaries, which disrupts the thermoregulation of the female body.
Also, a feeling of trembling, dizziness and nausea is characteristic of traumatic brain injuries, usually concussions. Additionally, depending on the severity of the damage, vomiting, disorientation in space, a tendency to fainting, and disturbances of consciousness are observed.
In addition, the following conditions and diseases can cause the described symptoms:
- tuberculosis;
- syphilis;
- acute disorders blood circulation;
- autonomic disorders;
- Raynaud's syndrome;
- sluggish chronic infections;
- spasms of blood vessels;
- and other pathologies of the endocrine system, thyroid function;
- internal bleeding;
- neuroses and neuralgia.
It is important to note that chills and nausea are characteristic clinical manifestations various exotic fevers that occur after insect bites - midges, mosquitoes, flies, beetles. If you start freezing immediately after arriving from vacation, you need to urgently visit an infectious disease doctor.
Frequent attacks of vomiting are dangerous due to the loss of large amounts of moisture and disruption of water and electrolyte balance, hypoxia. Therefore, with the symptoms in question, it is important to monitor drinking regime, consuming an increased volume of fluid per day, and consult a doctor as soon as possible.
Other causes of chills without fever in women
Feeling cold and trembling may well be a variant of normal physiological reactions to fluctuations in the level of sex hormones and changes in the functioning of the ovaries. In women, chills are often early sign started menopause, pregnancy, part of premenstrual syndrome. Due to hormonal imbalance, thermoregulation processes change, as a result of which the body retains heat less well and cools quickly.
Such conditions are also accompanied by other symptoms - hot flashes, pain in the lower abdomen, sweating, skin rashes, change of mood.
In order to understand what the reasons are for shivering without fever, first of all, it is important to know what chills are.
Chills are an intense feeling of cold, even when normal temperature air. For people with this manifestation, neither warm clothing nor an increase in ambient temperature helps. In most cases, this symptom occurs along with fever, however, relatively common conditions are when there is a chill, but there is no temperature.
Why do I feel chills without fever?
Chills can often occur when various disorders, not of a threatening nature. These conditions include the following:
- menopause includes the causes of chills without fever in women, which occurs due to a lack of certain hormones - over time the condition normalizes; sometimes, however, specialist help is required;
- Often women feel chills before menstruation - this is also due to hormonal imbalance, arising during this period;
- circulatory disorders, in turn, contain the causes of chills without fever in a child, but such a disorder is often found in adults; in a good way improvement of the condition is physical activity;
- vegetative-vascular dystonia – next factor risk; with this diagnosis, a person experiences chills and sweating without fever, the disorder is characterized by almost constantly cold extremities; a good solution may be hardening (for example, a contrast shower).
In any case, it is important to contact a specialist who, based on research, will indicate the cause of the symptom. Some women need to determine why they feel chills before menstruation - whether the basis of this condition is hormonal levels, or some pathologies that require intervention.
Common Causes
In case of chills, primary disease The cause of this symptom can be quite serious. In this case, immediate medical intervention is necessary!
Angina
Many people tend to consider this disease “banal” without paying enough attention to it. It is not right. Sore throat, which includes the reasons why a person feels cold without fever, can lead to serious complications, such as an abscess!
The disease occurs either independently or as part of another disease. Often occurs during periods of climate change - in autumn, spring, during sudden cooling.
There are several types of this disease:
- catarrhal tonsillitis (angina catarrhalis) - within a few hours, the tonsils increase in size by 2 times, sometimes a fever appears, or there is no temperature, but the body shivers and breaks down, as with the flu;
- Lacunar tonsillitis (angina lacunaris) is the most common type of disease; typical mainly for children and young adults, often recurrent in nature; the main inflammatory process occurs on the surface of the tonsils (they are called lacunae), weakness and chills may appear without fever or with fever;
- at the same time with lacunar tonsillitis follicular (angina folicularis) may develop, in which small abscesses appear in the tonsils, then appearing on the surface of the tonsils;
- Previously, there were also frequent cases of pseudomembranous tonsillitis, in which large bleeding lesions appeared on the tonsils.
As part of the underlying disease, sore throat occurs with infectious mononucleosis or herpetic infection, often in children preschool age during the summer viral infections. It is with a herpetic infection that it is often freezing without fever.
For bacterial sore throat, antibiotics are administered to which the pathogens are sensitive. For sore throat with infectious mononucleosis and herpes infection is prescribed symptomatic treatment(for example, painkillers).
Decreased thyroid function
This is a disease related to the causes that may cause constant chills without fever, often occurs in childhood. Children grow more slowly and may psychomotor development lag behind compared to their peers (starts to walk, talk, etc. later). Some of these disorders may persist into adulthood. Light forms reduced function thyroid gland, as a rule, are detected by chance, because do not show any symptoms. In severe hormone deficiencies, the symptoms are comprehensive and involve all organ systems. The entire metabolism slows down - fats are stored (a person may gain a little weight), cholesterol levels in the blood increase and, therefore, the risk of developing atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and myocardial infarction increases. Severe chills are accompanied by a number of other symptoms:
- dry skin;
- sometimes – slight yellowness skin due to slow metabolism of vitamin A;
- dryness, brittleness and hair loss.
Intestinal motility slows down, as a result of which the frequency of bowel movements decreases and constipation occurs. The respiratory rate is lower than that of healthy individuals. If left untreated, the disorder has a poor prognosis.
In deciding what to do if you have chills without fever due to decreased thyroid function, the first-line method is replacement hormone therapy– by directly administering the missing hormone. Used medicines include:
- Letrox;
- Euthyrox;
- L-thyroxine.
If a decrease in hormones and, accordingly, the manifestation of accompanying symptoms ( headache, nausea, chills, weakness, etc.) is caused by insufficient iodine intake; its supplement is prescribed by taking tablets containing this element. If the condition does not improve, hormonal therapy is introduced.
Severe hypothermia and frostbite
In the first stage of frostbite, the skin becomes pale and cold, followed by redness and severe pain. In the second stage, blisters filled with blood appear on the skin. The third stage is characterized by cell necrosis; after some time, the affected area turns black. All stages of frostbite can be the reason why it is freezing, but there is no temperature (but fever may also be present).
“Frostbite does not have to be limited to one part of the body; hypothermia may occur throughout the body.”
In this case, treatment for chills is to treat the underlying problem. At the first stage, it is enough to use painkillers, slow warming, disinfection and a sterile dressing. These frostbites should not be exposed to radiant heat.
At the second stage, the lesions are treated with physiological solutions at temperature human body, open wounds are disinfected, and if there is a risk of bacterial penetration, antibiotics are administered.
At the last stage, it is necessary to remove necrotic areas surgically.
In case of hypothermia, it is necessary to warm up as quickly as possible. As heat enters the body, chills and other symptoms subside. You should not drink alcohol!
Hormonal disorders
An imbalance of hormones, as mentioned above, causes chills during menstruation, before it, during menopause. But also hormonal disorder causes this symptom during puberty or after childbirth. Often a pregnant woman has a headache, colds and nausea - and hormones may be responsible for this condition.
In such cases, consultation with a specialist is necessary. Mostly, the unpleasant condition (chills and nausea) normalizes on its own. Sometimes physical therapy is prescribed. Hormonal treatment is not advisable.
Intestinal disorders
Intestinal problems can cause diarrhea and chills without fever (with inflammatory processes fever is usually present). The most common disorder is irritable bowel syndrome.
In addition to such manifestations as chills without fever, nausea, weakness, the disorder is accompanied by following signs:
- cramps or pain in the stomach;
- constipation;
- feeling incomplete emptying intestines;
- alternating diarrhea and constipation;
- mucus in stool;
- flatulence.
Often the disorder manifests itself to its maximum after a busy day, so irritable bowel syndrome is one of the reasons why you feel chills in the evenings.
For treatment, as a rule, dietary adjustments are sufficient. If necessary, medications are prescribed to reduce diarrhea and cramps, and antidepressants. Many people suffering from irritable bowel syndrome are also under psychological stress, experiencing anxiety, panic and depression. In this case, psychotherapy is an integral part of treatment. After the underlying disease is cured, the chills also disappear.
Shock
If a person’s body is chilling and aching, but there is no temperature, there are symptoms such as behavioral changes (mostly mild, in moderate and severe conditions there is loss of consciousness), thirst and cold sweaty skin (vessels narrow and sweat glands secrete more sweat), shock is most likely occurring.
Treatment depends on the type of shock and its underlying cause:
- In case of hypovolemic shock (occurs due to injury with severe external or internal bleeding), in which nausea and freezing are most common, it is necessary to control urination, the patient’s condition is monitored in the department intensive care. Bleeding must be stopped and lost blood replaced.
- Treatment cardiogenic shock(occurs in the case of a serious disturbance of cardiac activity, the person does not have a fever, but is very chilly) is carried out by a cardiologist and cardiac surgeon.
- Anaphylactic shock monitored in the intensive care unit. The main goal is to prevent changes in organs, stabilize circulation coefficients and eliminate the underlying cause.
Chills without fever are, in any case, a sign of illness. If such a symptom appears, you should consult a doctor to determine the cause and prescribe appropriate treatment.
What do you know about chills without fever? Share your opinion in the comments!
Not only girls, but also men can experience the feeling of chills, constant cold and the desire to wrap up warmer. In addition to hypothermia, chills can signal problems. Therapists note that muscle tremors and sweat are a manifestation of the body’s protective reaction to activate blood circulation.
A feverish state indicates that the body is trying to balance body temperature.
Chills without fever: what is it?
Fever occurs when the body tries to normalize its temperature. During a spasm of blood vessels and muscles, a person feels a feeling of cold, sweating and trembling at the same time. After the muscles begin to actively contract, blood begins to circulate faster and the feeling of trembling goes away.
But doctors warn that if it is freezing without fever and you sweat often, this signals the development of pathology. For example, hormonal and circulatory system disorders, the consequences of severe fright and trauma, neurosis, infections. It's important to know that heavy sweat- not a specific disease, but the body’s reaction to changes in temperature or pathological processes.
Causes of chills without fever
There are several possible factors when you actively sweat without a rise in temperature. More often, this reaction of the body manifests itself during colds, ARVI and flu. At first, this is a signal of an onset of illness. Fever is accompanied by aching bones. If the trembling does not go away after a while, this may indicate the development of pneumonia, scarlet fever and other dangerous diseases.
Another common reason why you sweat is hypothermia. In this case, it is easy to remove the unpleasant feeling; just dress warmly, take a warm shower or drink tea. Freezes when stressful situation, emotional overstrain, fright. Doctor Konstantin mentions this in his video.
Intestinal infections and intoxication of the body are also accompanied by chills. To restore the body, you should take medications that remove toxins. The cause of hyperhidrosis without fever may be high blood pressure(hypertension). Late application Seeing a doctor will provoke a stroke or hypertensive crisis.
Malfunctions of the endocrine system can provoke frequent chills. Exactly thyroid responsible for thermoregulation of the body. In women, frequent hot flashes and shivering occur during menopause. First trembling, and then heat and sweat.
Endocrinologists warn that chills without fever occur in diabetes mellitus. This is due to poor circulation. With this disease, blood vessels form cholesterol plaques. Subsequently, they become thin, which leads to problems with thermoregulation.
Chills and cold sweats without fever in women
The hormone estrogen is responsible for thermoregulation of the body. But during menopause, its level decreases. This is the reason frequent chills And . False signals about overheating that the hypothalamus receives provoke vasodilation peripheral part. Consequence - fever and active work sweat glands. After such a tide, fever often sets in.
Seizures severe chills and trembling can last from several minutes to several hours. All conventional methods are ineffective: hot tea, bath, warm blanket. Stress, smoking, and alcohol can trigger the feeling of sweating. The number of occurrences of hot flashes can be reduced only by following the rules:
- reduce consumption of nicotine, coffee, alcohol;
- dress warmer in the cold season;
- at unpleasant sensations keep your hands and feet warm;
- If you cannot reduce the frequency of chills on your own, it is recommended to consult a doctor to prescribe special medications.
Chills and sweats at night
Active sweating and muscle tremors without fever at night may be symptoms serious illnesses. It is difficult to immediately determine why it freezes.
The most common include:
- Stressful situations - constant tension in which a person is during the day, at night manifested by chills and sweating. This is a signal that the body can no longer cope with emotional stress.
- Changes in the level of hormones in the body are typical for women during menopause. After the body has readjusted to a new hormonal level night chills gradually passes.
- Neurological disorders.
- Tuberculosis.
- Hypertension, pressure changes.
- Taking certain medications - antipyretics, antidepressants, vasodilators.
- Heavy sweating and fever during colds and flu, when the body gets cold, is a protective reaction of the body that activates the immune system.
- Post-traumatic syndrome.
- Idiopathic hyperhidrosis.
- Diabetes.
If the symptom and fever have been bothering you for a long time, then you should not put off going to the doctor. For healthy person severe chills are not typical, so to determine the exact cause, it is necessary to undergo a diagnosis.
