10 Fascinating Facts About Body Temperature
What you might not know is that your core temperature changes as you age, when you smoke, and even when you tell a lie. Read on to find out more.
Body Temperature Can Go Up With Smoke
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 raises your core body temperature. Stop smoking, and your body temperature returns to normal within about 20 minutes.
Tell a Lie and Your Nose Heats Up
Fibbing may not cause your nose to grow, but lying will heat it up. Despite this distinction from the wooden puppet who wanted to be a real boy, Spanish researchers at the University of Granada still dubbed their finding the "Pinocchio effect." Using thermal imaging, they were able to demonstrate that the anxiety brought on by a lie causes the nose and the areas around the eyes to get warm.
A Cold Heart May Protect Your Brain
Being "cold-hearted" may not be so terrible, especially if you've just suffered a heart attack. Doctors at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore developed a technique that purposefully lowers a person' body temperature to prevent long-term disabling effects. Known as therapeutic hypothermia, the treatment has been shown to prevent further injuries, especially in the brain, when performed within four hours of a heart attack.
Cayenne Can Heat Up Your Body Temperature
Red pepper may not only add some spice to your meals, but it also can increase your 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, your body temperature rises temporarily. All these effects were greater on people who didn't regularly sprinkle on the spicy condiment.
Keep Your 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 less than 1 degree centigrade. Although the suits didn't affect the core 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 normal 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 a body temperature as low as 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 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, body temperature can be used to fairly accurately estimate the time of death. This finding is attributed to an English doctor and amateur chemist, John Davy. 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 your body temperature drops, it does so 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 lose more heat through their uncovered heads than adults.
Men and Women Are Different
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. For men, the chills won't kick in until the temp dips below 67 or 68 degrees.