Talk:Human body temperature

"Possible evolutionary phenomenon"

I deleted this section from the page.

It speculated that average human body temperature may be declining due to evolutionary change. It included no sources for this idea--the only reference was to an article that talked about decreasing average body temperature but gave different reasons. And it included unscientific sounding ideas like "As humans are the most dominant and advanced species, evolution favours their survival".

If there is a valid basis for the claims that were in the section, please include appropriate sources before re-adding it to the page.

--Eric (talk) 19:43, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Untitled

Article merged: See old talk-page here: talk:Core temperature

Article merged: See old talk-page here: talk:Temperature examination

Body

Body temperature depends on where it's measured. I attempted to add this text, but the page seems to be "locked for maintanance"

Children have different temperatures (from the fever page of wikipedia) ... what are thos temperatures and normal ranges? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.217.82.96 (talk) 22:32, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Normal human body temperature is a concept that depends on at what point in the body the measurement is made. The value of 36.8 °C ±0.7 °C, or 98.2 °F ±1.3 °F. is the common oral measurement. Rectal measurements, or measurements taken directly inside the body cavity, are typically about a half degree (C) higher. Body temperature of an individual also tends to vary during the day.... External Link

• [Body temperature at Web MD]

...with that said, when I measure my own oral temperature it's always within about .1F degrees of 98.6, so I'm not at all sure that the quoted 98.6 number is really false precision. Is there an actual histogram of temperatures that demonstrates this assertion that 98.6 is false?

Geoffrey.landis 23:22, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Russians typically measure body armpit temperature, not oral who knows in whose mouth this thermometer has been previous time?), so, this 0.4°C may be not caused by rounding, but by the different technique. Does anyone know what temperature has been measured in this classic German study?--213.148.27.12 21:23, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

CAN YOU DO A "REDIRECT"? I haven't learned how. The title of article is fine as it is. The term usually used in the studies I read is "Core body temperature". It would be good if a search for that term would redirect here. Thanks. Hordaland 09:13, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

In Poland it is also 36.6°C, armpit measure. M3n747 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.206.116.54 (talk) 12:18, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

A few months ago, I think it was in August 2007, there was some health news about some researchers who tried to reproduce Wunderlich's findings. The went to his old University and found his thermometer, used it, and compared the results to digital thermometers. The digital ones repeatedly gave 98.2 where the glass one gave 98.6. Further analysis showed that Wunderlich's thermometer was inaccurate, and that all subsequent thermometers calibrated to his are also inaccurate. For a hundred years we've been using inaccurate instruments. Can somone find this information and update the article, please? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.101.162.81 (talk) 03:01, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

New study confirming what is stated above (that average temperatures are 36.8 degrees C or 98.2 degrees F) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1302471?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=23

Error in Quoted Temperatures

Please note that in your "Method of Measurement" section, you quote the following temperature:-

Temperature in the anus (rectum/rectal), vagina, or in the ear (otic) is about 37.6 °C (98.6 °F)

Temperature in the mouth (oral) is about 36.8 °C (98.2 °F)

Temperature under the arm (axillary) is about 36.4 °C (97.6 °F)

There is something amiss with the first line (rectal temp), since converting 37.6 C to fahrenheit in Google yields 99.68 F, not the 98.6 quoted. So either the C or F temperature figure is wrong.

I hope this helps.

Drgao (talk) 00:59, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Also note that the average "oral" temperature is shown in three places on this page, and all three are different figures. Which is it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.52.47.145 (talk) 08:31, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Re:merger

Against - core temperature seems to be about the liver, etc. in the core of the body. This article is more about everyday measurement, the history of measurement, etc. - details that might get lost in the other. Smallbones (talk) 21:11, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Still the difference between core temperature and mouth or armpit temperature must be made anyways in the article to justify the different values of each method. They can all fuse nicely in a single good quality article.Godot (talk) 21:25, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Merger of Core temperature and Temperature examination into Normal human body temperature

See discussion here: Talk:Body_temperature#Merge with Normal human body temperature

I've made an attempt to preserve all content while minimizing redundancy and improving flow. More work is certainly needed. --Scray (talk) 04:21, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

As a relatively inexperienced WP editor, I also want to comment that I felt a little out of my depth here, so please forgive me if I messed up this merge. It was complex (two pages into a third), and the discussion was in a strange place - my fault, perhaps, I'm not sure. In any event, my hope is that we now have a starting place for a better page. --Scray (talk) 04:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Discrepancy

The introductory paragraph says the average temperature in the rectum or inside the body cavity is typically half a degree celsius, or 1 degree fahrenheit, higher than the oral temperature. But then below in the Methods of measurement section, it shows the temperature to be higher in the mouth than in the rectum, vagina or ear - please take a look at this, and make it clear, if it is in fact correct, that this is not a discrepancy. thanks ~ GoldenGoose100 (talk) 22:51, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I've fixed it, and listed the relevant sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:38, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

???Thanks for the reply WhatamIdoing - but you haven't changed anything to the article in terms of content. The top still seems to be disagreeing with the methods of measurement section... ? GoldenGoose100 (talk) 22:48, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Oops, nevermind, you did take care of it - thanks for fixing! ~ GoldenGoose100 (talk) 22:54, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

I vaguely remember hearing that ....

I removed a factoid that was sourced to a page that prefaced it with I vaguely remember hearing that...., followed by somewhat justified speculation. The factoid was that 98.6 came from unjustified addition of siginificant digits to the conversion of 37 C to F. But reference 1 of the article (A critical appraisal of 98.6 degrees F...) quotes the original source of 37 C as giving it with 3 significant digits.Ccrrccrr (talk) 22:44, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Then the authors of ref one didn't actually read the original, because I found a scanned copy of the second edition at Google Books, and 37,0 (to use the gute deutsche Interpunktionsart) doesn't appear a single time in the entire book -- not even in the conversion tables (see p. 419), where we can reasonably infer that Wunderlich intends to mean exactly 37.0.

In addition to the usual number of technological problems (did any handful of thermometers manufactured in that era really match to the necessary degree of precision?), the book doesn't seem to claim particular precision in its conclusions. See, e.g., section 2 of the first proper page, which asserts that the mean temperature of a well-closed armpit is "37", and that rectal and vaginal temperatures are "a few tenths of a degree higher".

I think that the link you rejected is fine: the author is only claiming that he vaguely remembers hearing the label "factoid" applied to the commonly quoted temperature, which hardly discredits his statements about what the numbers are or how they came to be. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:28, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for finding the original source!! Yes, as you point out, he does not use the convention of adding a zero to 37 even when that level of precision is intended. So we cannot draw the conclusion that he means 37 +/- 1 when he writes 37--we have to read more carefully, and I'll have to rely on you and others to do that, since I know very little German. For example, when you say that he says that rectal and vaginal temperatures are a few tenths of a degree higher that means to me that he think his precision is on the order of +/- 0.1 degree (C). If he thought his precision was only +/- 1 C, that statement would be meaningless. If he thought his precision was +/- 0.01 C, he'd be able to say something like 0.09 to 0.18 degrees higher. Rather, he says, in effect, 0.1 to 0.2 degrees C higher, which is consistent with believing the precision of the measurements to be on the order of 0.1 C.

Don't get me wrong--I'm not in favor of keeping 37.0 as the gold standard, or in assuming his accuracy was particularly good. I'll all in favor of going with modern measurements. My best guess is that, if he was asked, he'd say he meant 37 +/- 0.15, which is 98.6 +/- 0.3. But that's my OR, or really original "speculation" and I'm not going to write it into WP as a fact.

As for the link I rejected, yes, I perhaps over-dramatized the situation by emphasizing the vaguely remembered part. So that might not discredit what he states about the numbers, but let's look at that carefully. First, what that page is is a collection of references collected by high-school students, with editorial comments from their teacher. With no disrespect to high school students or teachers, that doesn't make it a credible source, although it's a wonderful resource for finding credible sources and a great summary of them. Looking through them, I find a broken link that I tracked down to [1] which cites a popular book that has the story of 98.6 being a mistake based on assuming 37 meant 37.0. But the peer-reviewed scientific articles listed don't say that, and instead discuss Wunderlich as intending 37.0. If someone wants to look up the book ("Innumeracy", by Paulos), you could see whether he has better documentation of his story, but from the reviews on Amazon I expect that he has no real documentation.Ccrrccrr (talk) 12:40, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I have Innumeracy (1988; ISBN 0679726012), but there's no index, and I didn't see anything about it in a quick flip through the book. However, it is mentioned in the last paragraph of a 1996 paper by the same author. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:39, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Again, thanks for locating a source. I'm not very impressed by that last paragraph: the statement of the range as 36.5 C to 37.5 C does not seem consistent with Wunderlich.

I found a translation of Wunderlich 2nd E. on Google Books: [2]. On p. 61 he recommends thermometers that can be read to 1/10 to 1/20 of a degree F. And p. 82 contains his statement of the normal range:

We may accept as not far from absolute truth supported as it is by the very numerous observations we have the opportunity of making in convalescence the statement that the range of normal temperature in the axilla is from 97.25 Fahr (36.25 C) to 99.5 Fahr (37.5 C) "and that the mean normal temperature" = 98.6 F (37 C).

(Italics from translation). In case anyone thinks the translator made the error, the corresponding passage in the original says (p. 92, typos mine)

Beobachtungen an Reconvalescenten zu machen Gelegenheit hat wenn man als Gränzen der normalen Achselhöhlentemperatur 36.25 bis 37.5 (= 29 bis 30 R) und als Mittelnormaltemperatur an derselben Stelle 37 (29.6) annimmt.

If the original ideas from Wunderlich got lost as they got passed down to modern popular understanding, what got lost is the idea that there is a range of normal, not the number of significant digits in the original data. In other words, Wunderlich never said that any thing other than exactly 98.6 was abnormal, But he did make measurement with better precision than +/-1 C, and did claim to know the mean normal temperature to three significant digits. Stating the "normal is 98.6, period" misquotes Wunderlich. Stating his value for mean normal temperature as 98.6 with three significant digits is an accurate representation. The loss of his expression of range was just that, not an error in conversion from F to C and not and misunderstanding of significant digits.

Ccrrccrr (talk) 20:15, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I read this interview today, and it reminded me of this old conversation. It appears that Wunderlich's thermometer wasn't correctly calibrated. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:56, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

where

where does it say what causes heat in the body to be produced and where in the body? we need to know that surely??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.103.10.67 (talk) 20:51, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The information you probably want is at Fever#Pathophysiology. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:10, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Average body temperature?

I have trouble determining whether the article means 36.8 C is the average oral body temperature over 24 hours or it's only the daytime average. It makes a big difference because the temp is low during the night. Anytime, the article is very useful. My daytime oral temp varied from 36.1 to 36.8. I got my blood checked and had low T3 which I corrected. Now my temperature has risen about 0.5 C and I feel much better and more energetic. PS: There should be a section on the flawed Broda Barnes method of measuring body temperature. His proposed minimum healthy temperature range was way too high, it didn't consider the average temp either. 93.161.106.58 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 09:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC).

See Normal human body temperature#Variations, particularly the two sentences beginning "'Normal' values are generally given for..." WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:07, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Fahrenheit's calibration point?

Here it claims (without citation) that Fahrenheit set body temp at 100° , but all other articles I've seen say he set body temp at 96°. For instance, see Fahrenheit. Can someone verify? Markg17 (talk) 02:26, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:56, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Farenheit Conversions are Incorrrect

It looks like the Fahrenheit conversions are incorrect or at least inconsistently rounded: 35.5–37.0 °C should be 95.9-98.6 °F not 96-99. If the C is rounded to the 10th , so should the F.

Actually, they are consistently rounded, to provide three significant digits in the previous calculations ("101 °F", because the source numbers have three significant digits), and to provide the same level of precision (number of digits after the decimal) for all four F conversions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:41, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Precision

If we're talking about an average and a range, then all numbers should show the range. I suggest we show one decimal place in these ranges.

I originally started this article because people kept saying the normal body temperature was 98.6 (in the USA), and I wanted to know where the ".6" came from. It turns out that someone in Europe had posed 37 °C as normal. This value was then converted from metric units into English units.

In the USA, laymen (i.e., people who don't know much about science) often forget about the concept of a "range". Indeed, many Americans fail to distinguish between mean, mode, and median when talking about an "average"; I daresay most would be hard pressed to define, let alone calculate, these. (I'm currently teaching remedial math at a small private school in Harlem.)

Let's ensure that the article does not perpetuate any misleading ideas about what is normal:

• Indicate ranges (and sources for these ranges)
• Explain how 37 °C (i.e., "around 37 degrees Celsius") morphed into 98.6 °F

Fair enough? --Uncle Ed (talk) 13:44, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

What he said! Stating that "average body temperature is 98.6°F" is FALSE both because it implies a level of precision that never existed and is based on an 19th century study in Germany. Modern studies have shown normal average body temperature significantly lower than this. --Lenehey (talk) 16:26, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

To be more precise, in the absence of systematic error, one increases the precision of a measurement with the averaging of multiple measurements. So even imprecise equipment, properly calibrated, on messy variables that you must sample evenly throughout the day, can be bumped to ok precision (and the best 19th century scientists were nothing if not diligent imo; I have no knowledge though to endorse this one in particular). However, in real-world use of this stat the most useful numbers to show are ranges, and as of writing this comment I think the article does this decently well. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:35, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Binning a weasel word

I've removed the starting part that seems to be a weasel word in my view. I've gave rewriting it a go. -- JaymesKeller (talk) 20:40, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

"Human body temperature" and Thermoregulation

A Spanish article specifically about human body temperature is necessary: Spanish-language article termorregulación includes both issues. --Correogsk or Gustavo (Eritrocito or Heme aquí) 02:33, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

History

This article seems to be the best place to show the history of the 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit figure that quite a few generations grew up with. That figure is marked on old mercury thermometers. A possible source would be:

http://www.altmedrev.com/publications/11/4/278.pdf

If this history exists elsewhere in Wikipedia, a link would be useful.Fotoguzzi (talk) 00:37, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

I think that the article Fahrenheit has what you are looking for. --Hordaland (talk) 08:40, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Global variations by country

How does the real and/or "accepted cultural myth" "normal" body temperature vary, from country to country, world-wide?-71.174.175.150 (talk) 23:09, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Does the human body use an absolute temperature reference to establish and maintain the set-point?

Does the human body use an absolute temperature reference to establish and maintain the set-point? Basically I am asking how the body knows what temperature corresponds to (say) 98.6 degrees? When designing a mechanical control to maintain a system at some specified temperature T the control would need some absolute reference for that particular temperature. The body does a remarkable job of maintaining a stable temperature, through various homeostasis mechanisms, but how does it know what absolute temperature to drive towards? I hope this makes sense. Thanks! --Lbeaumont (talk) 20:32, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Temperature fluctuates through the day. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:19, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

True, but it fluctuates around a set-point at some absolute temperature. What reference does the body use to establish that absolute temperature? --Lbeaumont (talk) 12:31, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

maximum normal body temperature?

The lead paragraph of this article says that normal body temperature (as measured by an oral thermometer) is 36.8±0.4 °C (98.2±0.72 °F), but the main text of the article says that it is 36.8±0.5 °C (98.2±0.9 °F). The source cited by the lead says that the upper limit of normal is 37.2°C (98.9°F) at 6:00 A.M. but 37.7°C (99.9°F) at 4:00 P.M. But these are 99th-percentile temperatures, so by the time the temperature reaches that level, something may already be wrong; therefore, I suppose that 37.3 °C (99.1 °F) (the number in the body of the article) may be a good value to settle on (in the lead) as the upper limit of normal. Anyway, even though the body of the article explains these variations in more detail, in my opinion the article should be internally consistent, quoting the same range in the lead and the body. 72.66.65.72 (talk) 01:23, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Upper limit of normal varies from 37.5 to 38.2 depending on the source. I typically go with 37.5 Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:03, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

hypothalamus's setpoint

There's only passing mention of the hypothalamus's setpoint. An explanation of the mechanisum would be useful. 2605:E000:1C0B:129:7D2B:E424:1EDE:619B (talk) 17:45, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Incoherence about temperature variance

The text in the article states that "An individual's body temperature typically changes by about 0.5 °C" during the day. But then we have a chart on the right side (supposedly of a healthy individual) where we see a variance of 1.2 ºC. What's wrong? --Savig (talk) 10:14, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Weak Sourcing

This article has 16 citations to two papers published in the Alternative Medicine Review. Both papers were written by a doctor of naturopathic medicine. In a 2007 discussion, this journal was found to perhaps be reliable since it was listed in pubmed, but I doubt it would pass the current WP:MEDRS standards. Most of the information cited from this journal seems reasonably accurate, so I'm leaving the information in for now. However, the {{medref}} tag needs to remain until we can find better sources. Billhpike (talk) 00:54, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

New discussion New discussion on RS Noticeboard Billhpike (talk) 01:11, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Gut temperature

Under Measurement methods: "Generally, oral, rectal, gut, and core body temperatures...". This is the only place in the article where gut is mentioned, and there is no reference given. And how is gut temperature measured, anyway? Pollifax (talk) 19:41, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Human average temperature has been lowered to 97.5

This WSJ article refers to a long-term study done at Stanford University, which established the average body temperature for modern-day humans has declined over the last 2 centuries, to 97.5. The study was published in eLife. ~Anachronist (talk) 14:58, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Otic vs Tympanic

In the "2.2 Measurement methods" I changed "otic" to "tympanic" to reduce confusion since the term "otic" is not used anywhere else in the article. Also, while "otic" is somewhat correct, that is, "anything relating to, or located in the region of the ear", (Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary) tympanic is "pertaining to the tympanum (the eardrum)" (MedicineNet.com) which is specifically where in the otic region the measurement is taking place and therefore a more precise term. (Kenyoni (talk) 20:19, 6 June 2020 (UTC))

"37°C" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect 37°C. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 12#37°C until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 16:46, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

"36.6" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect 36.6. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 13#36.6 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:26, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

"98.6°F" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect 98.6°F. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 13#98.6°F until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:28, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

"98.6°" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect 98.6°. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 13#98.6° until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:28, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Normal temperature

Someone on reddit writes:[3]

Believe it or not but the modern average temperature is around 97ºF range. The previous average of 98.6ºF was determined back before we had a number of critical modern medicines. The elimination of things like chronic parasites, chronic minor infections, etc. resulted in a reduction of the average temperature by a degree or two.

I had never heard that before and the article doesn't mention it. Is there some reasonable sourcing? If yes, it should be added. Thx 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:C115 (talk) 19:45, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

temperature setpoint

This article and hyperthermia variously spell the term as set point, set-point, or setpoint. Some consistency would be nice, in order to make it easier to use one's browser's "Find text in the current page" feature. 2A0D:6FC2:6A92:3F00:0:0:0:5F9 (talk) 12:56, 10 January 2024 (UTC)