Major Symptoms Of Pneumonia

Excessive Sweating

Pneumonia can manifest with the patient sweating excessively. When the immune system of an affected individual detects the pneumonia-causing pathogen initially, the body's thermostat is reset from 98.6 degrees to a certain point above 100 degrees. The body works its way up to this reset temperature through chills and making the individual feel cold so they will warm up with more clothes and or a blanket. Once the body reaches this high temperature, it makes efforts to maintain homeostasis at this temperature. This mechanism means the body doesn't want the temperature to rise above that point or fall below that point.

To keep the temperature from going higher, the body initiates its cooling mechanism of sweating. Even though the patient's temperature has met the internal thermostat temperature, the temperature they feel doesn’t immediately change. They stay under the blanket or layers of clothes until they notice they are sweating. The process of the body warming itself up with shaky chills and then slightly cooling back down with sweating may occur a handful of times before the body has fought off the pathogen causing pneumonia.

Blue Lips And Fingernails

Blue lips and fingernails can also be a symptom of pneumonia. The blue hue in the lips and fingernails is a result of the way light reflects through the skin off the dark red color of poorly oxygenated blood. Light reflects off the bright red color of oxygen-rich blood through the skin in a different way, resulting in a healthy pink hue to the skin. The fingertips and lips have a shortage of oxygenated blood in severe cases of pneumonia. This malfunction occurs because the excess production of mucus and sputum in the lungs can interfere with the passage of air from the trachea to the little air sacs called alveoli.

The alveoli contain many tiny blood capillaries responsible for the exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen. However, when mucus blocks oxygenated air from reaching these capillaries, they cannot function to absorb the oxygen and release the carbon dioxide. The blockage of numerous alveoli at the same time causes blood oxygen levels to fall and carbon dioxide levels to rise. There is then not enough oxygen in the blood to reach all of the tiny vessels in the patient's fingertips, lips, and mucous membranes, resulting in the blue hue in the skin.