The Average Body Temperature Is Not 98.6¡ãF Anymore. We're Cooling Down.

98.6¡ãF. For the last 150 years, the normal temperature of the human body had remained the same. Anything above meant your mother jabbing thermometers into your mouth, squinting and then guessing whether or not you had a fever. Anything less was dismissed as something her and science had no explanation/remedy for. It had remained the same for the industrial revolution, the Amazon and Australia burning, icebergs melting and polar bears going hungry.

No more.

There's a twist in the tale. The human body no longer tops off at 98.6¡ãF. The new normal temperature of the average Sandra and Aditya is 97.5¡ãF. And here's how it got there.

Image credit: Reuters.

To kick things off, this new study, published in the medical journal e-life titled, 'Decoding human body temperature since the Industrial Revolution,' carried out by researchers from Stanford University, clearly states that 98.6¡ãF was derived by analysing the body temperature of 25,000 human beings who were just returning from war.

It was hardly a great sample size if you consider that humanity topped off at 1 billion in 1800. If you consider the current population of the world, it's an abysmal 0.004 per cent. This percentage is less than the number of people who have met on a dating app and are now happily married. It's that low.

No wonder then that Dr Julie Parsonnet, a professor of medicine and health research at Stanford University School of Medicine and the senior author of one study on how the human body temperature has decreased in the US arrived at the conclusion: "Our temperature's not what people think it is. What everybody grew up learning, which is that our normal temperature is 98.6, is wrong."

Image credit: Pexels.

Then, are there other reasons too that contributed to us cooling down?

¡°Physiologically, we¡¯re just different from what we were in the past,¡± Parsonnet says.

In the past, our ancestors were busy chopping wood, farming and really working hard to carry out the sedentary way of like that persisted at that time. Fast track to 2020, most of us don't get off the couch to get ourselves a glass of water. So our metabolic rate, which also keeps our body warm, doesn't have to work as much anymore.

Image credit: Pexels.

Yes, what you are thinking is right too. We now live our lives inside air-conditioned rooms, cars and for a lucky, privileged few, even bathrooms.

These figures bring forward one central idea and that is how magical our bodies are. Our lifestyle evolved and the body adapted beautifully. So, the next time you feel feverish, you will know that 98.6¡ãF is not the new normal anymore. We were cold with our hearts but now our bodies have followed suit.