New Scientist: Humans are cooling down so average body temperaturs is no longer 37 C

[Kalliope]

Humans are cooling down so average body temperature is no longer 37 C

“The most likely explanation in my view is that, microbiologically, we’re very different people than we were,” says Parsonnet. Modern people have fewer infections, thanks to vaccines and antibiotics, so our immune systems are less active and our body tissues less inflamed. If that is true, body temperatures should also have fallen in other countries where people’s health has improved.

The cooling trend shows no sign of stopping soon, says Parsonnet. “There is going to be a limit, we’re not going to get down to zero,” she says. “But I just don’t know where that is.”

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Another bit of highly suspect 'science' I would say.

Firstly they get the maths wrong with 0.03 degrees drop per decade because over 200 years that would be 6 degrees and we would all be seriously hypothermic. Presumably they mean 0.003.

We were never taught in the 1960s that normal was 37 degrees. The only reason this myth has come about is that hospital charts at some time maybe fifty or more years ago had a line drawn on them at 37 degrees. We were actually taught that the normal for men was 36.8 (~98.4 in Fahrenheit) and that the normal for women depended on the time of the menstrual cycle (by half a degree). I was taught as a student that even 37 degrees was suspicious of abnormality.

The real problem though is that people reading thermometers constantly massage the result and in a high proportion off cases in hospital you saw charts with every measurement at 37 degrees on the dot. This either meant that the nurse had not actually measured it, or more likely they measured it, found it to be nearly 37 and marked it as 37 because they had been taught that was normal.

The idea that our temperatures are lower because we have less infections seems to me to be totally implausible. It may be true in the sense that most measurements of temperature 200 years ago were on people with an infection and now they mostly aren't - because people mostly went into hospital with infections 200 years ago but not now - but that does not mean that people are walking around the streets with lower temperatures than they used to. It seems extraordinarily unlikely that our hypothalamuses are now different such that if we have a temperature of the sort that was normal 200 years ago we feel terrible when they didn't.

 

[Mij]

I'm still a hot mess since the age of 52.

 

[DigitalDrifter]

May be modern thermometers are more accurate.

 

[Pechius]

Firstly they get the maths wrong with 0.03 degrees drop per decade because over 200 years that would be 6 degrees and we would all be seriously hypothermic. Presumably they mean 0.003.

0.03 per decade. There are 20 decades in 200 years.

0.03*20=0.6°

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

0.03 per decade. There are 20 decades in 200 years.

0.03*20=0.6°

Quite right.

 

[Creekside]

We were actually taught that the normal for men was 36.8

That's good to know. I tried to find out what was supposed to be 'normal' and didn't find a definitive answer. When I'm feeling normal levels of ME symptoms, my oral temperature is usually 36.65. Yes, that seems like excessive precision, but that's what several different thermometers kept showing. When my symptoms got worse, my temperature usually rose a few tenths, as much as a full degree on rare occasions. It would rise and then fall again over a period of tens of minutes, so whatever is causing it works fast.

 

[JemPD]

The real problem though is that people reading thermometers constantly massage the result and in a high proportion off cases in hospital you saw charts with every measurement at 37 degrees on the dot. This either meant that the nurse had not actually measured it, or more likely they measured it, found it to be nearly 37 and marked it as 37 because they had been taught that was normal.

Is there some reason that this isn't as appalling as it seems to be to me?

 

[Forbin]

“There is going to be a limit, we’re not going to get down to zero,” she says.

Well, that takes a load off my mind.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Is there some reason that this isn't as appalling as it seems to be to me?

No, it is appalling. People find it very hard not to find what they are supposed to find.
But the fudging of temperature measurements seemed to develop in the 1980s. When I was a student the temperature charts tended to be accurate - because it was essential with patients with subtle fevers like subacute bacterial endocarditis. By 1980 the nurses thought it didn't;t really matter so they just put 37 degrees.

 

[Saz94]

If only the planet would do the same