BS: we are officially cooler

Subject: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Apr 20 - 11:39 AM

Apparently human body temperature is decreasing.

Stanford University, School of Medicine, report eg:
This substantive and continuing shift in body temperature—a marker for metabolic rate—provides a framework for understanding changes in human health and longevity over 157 years. (US civil war to present)

Makes me think we are walking round fighting less micro-infections all the time, &/or explains the obesity epidemic.

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Apr 20 - 11:42 AM

Or a response to global warming or more CO2?

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Mr Red
Date: 28 Apr 20 - 11:51 AM

Average human body temperature is down from 37^oC to 36.6^oC (typically).

But yes, it will help with global warming a little. Without modern tech it is impossible for human habitation if the temperature exceeds approx 42^oC all year round. And there are places in the world that is happening now.

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Senoufou
Date: 28 Apr 20 - 12:42 PM

Could this have anything to do with a more sedentary lifestyle? That would explain the lowering of metabolic rate (a sort of mini-hibernation state) I wonder if they've measured the body temperature of African people living traditional lifestyles? They generally aren't obese, move around a lot and walk miles.
Sorry if this is all covered in the article, I couldn't get the various sections to load)

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Apr 20 - 03:44 PM

Well, without showing off about it, my background is in biological science, and I'm extremely sceptical about this. Let's see what's changed over the last couple of centuries. We don't take temperatures under armpits any more, a very unreliable method (in fact, I used to get older kids to experiment on this and we found wild inaccuracies, though I did find a lad in my class with pneumonia once...) Temperatures taken axially, orally, aurally or anally all give different answers and all suffer from a degree of unreliability via very human inconsistencies of approach by both measure and recipient. They are a great tool for doctors to confirm their diagnoses but they are rarely intended to be a firmly scientific measure. Second, in the good old days all was done in Fahrenheit. As the distance from one Fahrenheit degree to the next is much smaller than the distance from one Celsius degree to the next (a factor of 5:9), the temptation to round up or down to the nearest whole degree F was justified in consideration of human body temperature. A bit of a degree Fahrenheit one way or the other was so small as to be not worth medically bothering about, so rounding would have been rife. Third, thermometers have increased in accuracy and reliability. This issue has been addressed in the matter of global warming, in which much agonising and corrective techniques have been applied to older readings, still much argued about. We are talking about less than half a degree Celsius here. The study is interesting but that's as far as it goes.

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Apr 20 - 03:46 PM

by both measurer and recipient

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Senoufou
Date: 28 Apr 20 - 04:03 PM

Oh that's an excellent explanation Steve! So it all boils down to accuracy in measurement and consistency of instruments used. I do like a scientific approach.
I also think that various cultures and lifestyles would produce variations of body temperature, blood pressure and so on due to variables in geography, climate, physical activity, diet and even race and age.

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Apr 20 - 05:40 PM

I'm not trying to dismiss the study. It's interesting but it's basically a study of the accumulation of statistics collected over a very long period of time using very different methods with different motivations for taking measurements (scientific accuracy probably playing second fiddle to medical exigencies), and, not least, with instruments that may have been a lot less calibrated in the past than they are now. Just sayin'!

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Apr 20 - 06:09 PM

I remember a story a number of years ago about a young med student who was curious about the origin of 98.6°F. He decided to run his own little study in his spare time and collected data on quite a number( hundreds? thousands?) can't remember.
His own 'data' showed an average of something like 98.3-4 was closer. I'm not sure whether it was taken seriously and it was still clear that over 100F was a concern, so maybe it wasn't worth trying to correct all the textbooks.. :>) But it does tie into that Stanford conclusion.

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Mr Red
Date: 29 Apr 20 - 10:06 AM

and I'm extremely sceptical about this.
The more modern measurement apparently show the same rate of decline. 0.03°C per birth decade.

So Stanford University, School of Medicine not up to your standards then? Should we break the news to them?

Could this have anything to do with a more sedentary lifestyle? - Statistically pretty much in the mix there. IMHO. I know people who exercise a lot have resting heart rates lower than average, but what would that do the average temperature? I can't figure which way it would affect the result. A case of empiricism defeating self-styled pundits - I submit. Who'dathoughtit?

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Apr 20 - 10:40 AM

I'll let you tell them. Maybe it will stop you from trolling for a minute.

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: robomatic
Date: 29 Apr 20 - 10:05 PM

I wondered about this when I heard the news, and I heard it generally and not as the result of a study. I've gotten my temperature taken regularly over the years and it's usually been in the high 97 low-to-mid 98 range (Fahrenheit of course). Unless this recent study addressed the source of their numbers I'm doubtful as well. So many supposedly reliable insitutions have been letting us down lately (CDC, New York Times, Boeing, etc.)
I attended Stanford and I have no inherent belief in anything out of them as well. And they were no worse than Harvard, the Stanford of the East.

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Apr 20 - 10:19 PM

As long as my body temperature is above the ambient temperature I'm okay.

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Mr Red
Date: 02 May 20 - 11:12 AM

I was thinking of adding references to Wiki but they got there already and surprise, surprise, the most likely explanation for the change is a reduction in inflammation at the population level due to decreased chronic infections and improved hygiene

A more lengthy "abstract" on the subject. Apprently A compilation of 27 modern studies, however (Sund-Levander et al., 2002), reported mean temperature to be uniformly lower than Wunderlich’s** estimate

** In 1851, the German physician Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich obtained millions of axillary temperatures from 25,000 patients in Leipzig, thereby establishing the standard for normal human body temperature of 37°C or 98.6 °F

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 03 May 20 - 06:20 AM

** In 1851, the German physician Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich obtained millions of axillary temperatures from 25,000 patients in Leipzig, thereby establishing the standard for normal human body temperature of 37°C or 98.6 °F

Thanks, Mr Red.
I was about to respond to Bill D's comment I remember a story a number of years ago about a young med student who was curious about the origin of 98.6°F.

98.6° wasn't chosen, or the result of careful study. Random testing gave an approximation close to 37°C, this was then converted to "exactly" 98.6°F ( (F-32)/9=C/5 )thus giving a Fahrenheit reading which appeared to show an amazing degree of precision which wasn't actually that accurate.

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 May 20 - 08:52 AM

It seems that the estimable Mr Wunderlich rounded the Celsius number up to exactly 37 from a slightly lower overall average. I'm sure he must have been aware of the shortcomings I mentioned in my first post in this thread and was thereby resistant to the common scientific failing of resorting to "spurious accuracy." The conversion to Fahrenheit was then rendered from that rounded-up Celsius figure (even then it was often stated wrongly as 98.4F, which, ironically, is close to the true Fahrenheit number deriving from his original slightly lower average Celsius value).

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Bill D
Date: 03 May 20 - 03:29 PM

Well... the student I read about was working with that 98.6 as the generally accepted 'norm' of the day, no matter what the origin. The details Mr Red posted gives a pretty good set of studies and details about what has been discovered, and the overall generalization seems to be that 'slightly lower'... whether by .2, or .6 or whatever... seems to be better.

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Mr Red
Date: 04 May 20 - 01:02 PM

perhaps we are less hotheaded.

Mostly.

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Mr Red
Date: 05 May 20 - 02:42 AM

It is worth repeating that the Stanford University, School of Medicine, report concerned itself only with American data, in three cohorts. And was triggered by earlier reports hinting the phenomenon. Wunderlich is a red herring.

Subject: RE: BS: we are officially cooler
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 May 20 - 05:50 AM

Was he a socialist then? A red Herr?