When I was a child my mother would stick an oral thermometer in my mouth. When she returned she would always be annoyed with me, saying that I didn’t have it in right, because my temperature was too low. She would say with irritation: ‘Now this time do it right!’ So I would feel discouraged and would give the thermometer a hard jab into my mouth until it hurt. But my temperature would still be too low.
The story below suggests, decades too late for me, that maybe it wasn’t my fault. Maybe the official mandated “normal” temperature of 98.6 was wrong!
(p. D6) We seem to be getting cooler. Since 1851, when the standard was set at 37 degrees centigrade, or 98.6 Fahrenheit, the average human body temperature has steadily declined.
. . . . The analysis is in eLife.
. . .
. . . improvements in sanitation and improved dental and medical care have reduced chronic inflammation, and the constant temperatures maintained by modern heating and air conditioning have helped lower resting metabolic rates. Today, a temperature of 97.5 may be closer to “normal” than the traditional 98.6.
For the full story see:
Nicholas Bakalar. “Is 98.6 No Longer ‘Normal’?” The New York Times (Tuesday, January 21, 2020): D6.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story was updated Jan. 21, 2020 [sic], and has the title “Body Temperature 2.0: Do We Need to Rethink What’s Normal?”)
The academic paper in eLife, mentioned above, is:
See also: