system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How does our body heat itself up so significantly when it's sick?

What exactly does it do to accomplish this? Presumably the fevered person is just lying in bed all day, so how does the body produce so much more heat than usual?

 I'd imagine it has something to do with burning more energy in your body, but it's not like the chemical energy stored in our fat can be directly converted to thermal energy, right?
gpt
> it's not like the chemical energy stored in our fat can be directly converted to thermal energy, right?  

Actually, it can. There are compounds called 'uncouplers' that disconnect the energy from the electron transport chain with ATP synthesis, so that energy is converted to heat instead of ATP. The body probably has a way of doing this internally to induce a fever. An example of a synthetic molecule that does this is 2,4-dinitrophenol (2,4-DNP), which was used as a diet pill but is now banned.