10 Fascinating Facts About Body Temperature
What’s Normal Body Temperature?
Is your body temperature 98.6 degrees and falling? If so, it can reveal a lot about your health. In fact, body temperature is one of four vital signs doctors watch for, the other three being blood pressure, pulse rate, and respiration rate.
As you probably know, 98.6 degrees F is considered a normal body temperature, though healthy adults can range between 97.8 degrees F and 99 degrees F. Our bodies also constantly adapt their temperature according to environmental conditions. Body temperature rises when you exercise. You may have low body temperature at night. And if you check your body temperature with a thermometer, you will see that it’s higher in the afternoon than first thing in the morning when you rise.Babies have a high body temperature when compared with older children or adults. This high body temperature is because babies sweat less when they are warm. It’s also why babies are more likely to have a fever than children or adults.A fever is a temporary high body temperature, and is often related to illness. Usually fevers subside in a few days, but for an adult a body temperature over 103 degrees F signals danger and warrants medical attention. For babies and toddlers, even a slightly high body temperature may signify a serious infection or medical condition. Always call your doctor about any high body temperature or low body temperature that is abnormal.
Different over-the-counter medicines, such as acetaminophen (Tylenol) or ibuprofen (Advil and Motrin), may lower a fever or high body temperature, but check with your doctor before taking one of these or giving a fever-reducing medication to a child. It’s thought that fever may be best left untreated as the high body temperature may help your body fight the illness or infection.You have a fever when your temperature is at least 1 degree over your normal body temperature, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians. What’s normal for you may be a little higher or lower than the average normal temperature of 98.6 degrees F (37 degrees C). Some people have a low body temperature of 97.8 degrees F all the time, and for them this temperature is normal.With a high body temperature and fever, you may experience the following symptoms:
- Chills and shivering
- Dehydration
- General weakness
- Headache
- Irritability
- Loss of appetite
- Muscle aches
- Sweating
If these symptoms last more than a few days, see your doctor. Young children from 6 months to 5 years old might experience febrile seizures with a high body temperature. Medical attention is necessary to lower the temperature and treat the symptoms.Along with illness causing a high body temperature, your temperature changes as you age, when you smoke, and even when you tell a lie. Read on to find out more.
Smoking Causes High Body Temperature
Your body temperature goes up when you smoke. Here’s why: The temperature at the tip of a cigarette is 95 degrees C, or 203 degrees F. Inhale hot smoke, and it raises your lung temperature. When your lungs are hot, they are unable to perform one of their responsibilities, which is to cool or remove heat from your body. As a result, it causes high body temperature. When you stop smoking, your body temperature returns to normal within about 20 minutes.
Tell a Lie and Your Nose Heats Up
Can Cayenne Cause High Body Temperature and Weight Loss?
Red pepper may not only add some spice to your meals, but it also can cause high body temperature as part of the digestive process. Researchers at Purdue University had dieters add about a half teaspoon of red cayenne pepper to their daily food intake as part of a study to see if it helped weight loss. They also noted that red pepper helps to reduce appetite and increase calorie expenditure, and when you burn more calories, you get high body temperature temporarily. All these effects were greater on people who didn’t regularly sprinkle on the spicy condiment.
Keep Your Body Temperature Cool to Sleep Better
Your body temperature can affect how well you sleep. Scientists at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam found that people slept better when their skin was slightly cooled. The researchers fitted study participants with special suits that lowered their skin temperature by less than 1 degree C (1.8 degree F).Although the suits didn’t affect the average body temperature, the participants didn’t wake up as often at night and went into a deeper sleep. Cooling the skin’s surface temperature made the biggest difference among older participants who had complained of insomnia.
Older Is Colder When It Comes to Body Temperature
If it seems like you’re always cold, even during the dog days of summer, it could be your age. Studies show that as we age, our average body temperature declines slightly. Researchers in Turkey measured the body temperature of 133 nursing home residents and found that body temperature was below average in those 65 to 74 years old, lower still in people 75 to 84, and lowest among those older than 85, some of whom had low body temperature of 93.5 degrees F under normal circumstances. This is important to know, because seniors might actually be running a fever at lower temperatures than younger adults.
Body Temperature Can Help Pinpoint Time of Death
This isn’t just crime-show fodder. When someone dies, their body begins to cool at a set rate: about 1.5 degrees F an hour. If a coroner examines the deceased within 24 hours, and the body hasn’t been in a room that’s not too hot or too cold, the low body temperature can be used to fairly accurately estimate the time of death. This finding is attributed to John Davy, an English doctor and amateur chemist. In 1839, he reported on experiments using a mercury thermometer to measure the body temperature of dead soldiers to determine when they had died.
That Hat May Not Help You Retain Body Heat
Remember your mom telling you to wear a hat when it’s cold outside because body heat is lost through your head? Turns out, her advice might not be completely spot-on, according to a report published in the medical journal BMJ. When you lose body heat and you get low temperature, this drop happens from all parts of your body at an equal rate. How much body temperature you lose from your head depends on a number of factors, including how thick your hair is and how much energy you expend in the cold. But because a child’s head is larger in proportion to the rest of the kid’s body’s surface, children can get a low body temperature from uncovered heads faster than adults.
Men and Women Are Different When It Comes to Body Temperature
When you’re exposed to the cold, your body begins to conserve heat. It wants to protect your vital organs, such as your heart, lungs, and brain, so more blood flows to these areas and less to your hands and feet. This affect happens to women much more quickly, meaning a woman’s hands and feet will get colder more quickly than a man’s. Women will feel the effects once the temperature goes below 70 degrees F. For men, the chills won’t kick in until the temp dips below 67 or 68 degrees F.
A Fever Can Be Your Friend
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