
Pushing back on the definition of normal body temperature - sndean
https://www.wired.com/story/98-degrees-is-a-normal-body-temperature-right-not-quite/
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ramshorns
I had heard that 98.6 °F was the result of rounding to 37 °C before
converting, and that maybe the actual temperature is a bit lower.

This article mentions 97.7 °F, 99.5 °F, and 100.4 °F, which also look like
they were rounded to the nearest half-degree Celsius. Some numbers might not
have as much precision as it looks like.

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deepsun
Probably, although I don't understand why 37.

In Europe (at least in post-soviet countries I can speak of), _everyone knows_
(c) that the body temperature should be 36.6, which is 97.9 F. 37-to-37.5 is
kinda beginning of a fever already.

~~~
duchenne
The wikiepdia article on body temperature is interesting. You can get
different numbers depending on the language:

\- Arabic/French/Polish/Turkish: 37 °C

\- Chinese: 36.8±0.4℃

\- English: 36.5–37.5 °C

\- Italian: 36.5 °C

From my own experience, people say:

\- France: 37 °C

\- Korea: 36.5 °C

source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_temperature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_temperature)

~~~
kruczek
Polish version doesn't say 37°C is normal. It says that "latest research shows
that average temperature of a healthy adult is 36.8°C". However it also notes
that in Poland and Russia the ideal temperature was considered to be 36.6°C,
which is what I remember too.

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jedberg
A great podcast on the subject:

[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/bad-medicine-
part-1-story-98...](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/bad-medicine-
part-1-story-98-6/)

TL;DL: The guy who came up with 98.6 was using inaccurate equipment.

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sverige
My normal temperature has always been 97.9, since childhood. I usually feel a
little sick at 98.6. When I tell doctors and nurses this, most are
unsurprised.

It's interesting that the medical profession won't revisit this issue in a
scientific way.

~~~
mywittyname
Medical professions have known for a while that body temperature varies
greatly. It's the layman that are stuck on the 98.6° thing.

The same person can be 97° at 8am, then 100° at 8pm and feel totally fine. But
the next day they are 100° at 8am and feel awful. There are a lot of factors
that go into determining a good body temperature.

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dandare
In my country, the pediatricians almost uniformly recommend lowering sick
child's fever with cold towels or lukewarm showers. I never understood what is
the point of lowering the fever below 103F. What is the evidence for this?
What is the evidence for lowering fever below 104F or 105F?

Can someone knowledgeable comment?

~~~
jakobegger
I think that trying to lower a fever with cold towels is pointless. If your
body decides it wants to be 40°C / 104F then it's going to do everything to
maintain that. So by trying to cool the body with wet towels, you are just
making it work harder, and you exhaust the kid even more.

Anti inflammatory drugs like Ibuprofen are the most effective way of lowering
fever, it will actually cause the body to cool down on its own, and no wet
towels will be necessary. Unless you have a really severe infection, in which
case you should go to the hospital.

The only time when wet towels make sense if your kid can't regulate body
temperature on its own anymore (eg. because of severe dehydration), but then
you should really take them to the hospital as well.

~~~
gaius
Cold towels on the head is to lower _brain_ temperature while allowing the
fever to run elsewhere. Brain tissue is much more susceptible to thermal
damage than the rest of the body.

~~~
Johnny555
I'd think it'd be better to cool the neck to cool off the blood in the carotid
arteries on the way to the brain.

Surface cooling of the scalp seems like it'd have a very limited effect on
cooling the brain when body temperature blood is being pumped directly into
the brain.

~~~
dan000892
Your thought is in line with traditional thinking, but a 2015 study in the
Wilderness & Emergency Medicine Journal found that cold packs applied to
capillary-dense surfaces (cheeks, palms, soles) caused a greater reduction in
body temperature that the traditional core/artery surfaces (groin, armpits,
neck).

Source:
[https://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(14)00405-0/abs...](https://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032\(14\)00405-0/abstract)

~~~
Johnny555
I can believe that's true for lowering core body temperature due to the larger
surface area of capillary blood, but the post I was replying to said that
cooling the head is specifically supposed to target just the brain and not the
rest of the body:

 _Cold towels on the head is to lower brain temperature while allowing the
fever to run elsewhere_

It still seems that if the goal is to cool the brain and not the entire body,
cooling the blood on its way to the brain is better than surface cooling blood
in the scalp that's going to soon leave the head through veins.

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jaclaz
In italy "normal" is considered 36.5 C[1], but anything up to 36.9 C is OK,
over 37 C it starts to be called "small fever" (febbriciattola), when over
37.5 then it becomes properly a "fever", nothing to really worry however
unless it is 38 or over.

Personally I am always on the 36.8/36.9, whilst my wife is always on the
36.3/36.4 (we do a good average together).

The real issue is that (thanks to the ban of good ol' mercury based
thermometers) I doubt the reliability of both the new "mercury free" glass
thermometers (that in my experience tend to get "stuck") and the new
electronic ones (possibly it is just that the common ones are cheap devices).

[1] normally "armpit" temperature measuring is used

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jgtrosh
Maybe this is why I have such a different experience : I've always heard of
37.5C as standard and fever starts around 38.5/39C, but rectal thermometers
are very common here.

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astura
That explains it, temperature is going to be slightly higher if measured
rectally than orally.

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coding123
If anyone working at Feverprints sees this, please for the love of all things,
disable your scrolljacker.

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YinglingLight
I feel hypothyroidism is more prevalent today than at any other point in human
history. Everyone needs to check their body temperature regularly, it's a
great metric.

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SketchySeaBeast
> "hypothyroidism is more prevalent today than at any other point in human
> history"

Possibly because it was only discovered a century and a half ago and it's
easily measured in the modern era? Plus, two hundred years ago it would have
been "cold and tired all the time", which I kind of think was the default
state for humanity.

~~~
seandougall
Sounds like what would have been called a “weak constitution”.

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SketchySeaBeast
Which was everything from hypothyroidism to depression to coughing up blood.

