Shouldn’t it be the most comfortable temperature? 🤔

  • TheBananaKing@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 year ago

    Your body is constantly generating heat. If that heat has nowhere to go, your temperature goes up and up.

    You need to be in an environment that sucks heat away as fast as you create it - and if the external air temp isn’t cold enough to do that on its own, then you have to rely on evaporation of sweat to help shed the heat.

    If that doesn’t cut it, you die.

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s the feature that let us become the dominant predator. We could track large game that is wounded until the collapsed from heat exhaustion. Yay sweaty humans!

      • MoonshineDegreaser@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        So are you saying that people who sweat more in hot environments are better suited for long distance hunting? Because I’m a gross, sweaty mofo and I would like to feel better about it

        • sudo22@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Probably not I’m sorry. Sweating enough so that the sweat evaporates as fast as it excretes from your pores is optimal. Skin being more wet doesn’t cool faster (drops of sweat falling off you don’t cool you), so excess sweat would just dehydrate you faster. Sorry

  • DrQuint@lemm.ee
    1·
    1 year ago

    The internal temperature is whatever you said. That’s the temperature your guts need to live.

    You have a gigantic organ providing insulation between that and the world. It’s called skin. It keeps the heat in and the cold out and can self regulate for the task too. Doesn’t mean your skin won’t be a relatively high temperature but overall, it’s slightly less than your internals. It keeps your internal temperature that way by releasing the same amount of heat that you produce yourself and capture from the outside, and that difference is usually related to how hot or cold is outside. Because see, heat transfers from a hot to a cold object constantly and passively, and the skin has to chase that value according to demand. Your body will release less heat if it’s cold, and way more if it’s hot out (so it feels even hotter than the air).

    Funny detail about fans: Fans don’t actually lower temperatures. Moving air, if anything, should increase it. But it works on us and on electronics for the same reason: We are heat emitters. Pushing air away from an electronic device usually means dragging away the hottest air from the hottest object, so it should overall be cooling down. For us, it also has a bit to do with surface humidity, but that’s because of, again, skin.

    • maporita@unilem.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      Another reason a fan works is because it increases evaporation of sweat. Evaporation involves a phase change which requires energy. That energy is extracted from the body surface. Without air flow the envelope of air next to the skin gets saturated meaning it can’t hold any more water vapor, so evaporation stops.

  • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
    1·
    1 year ago

    You’ve got a lot of good answers, but I’m missing one important factor why 98F isn’t comfortable for you…

    Your body temperature is too high!

    Okay bear with me, please…
    As I’m sure you’ve already read, your body being 98F/37C needs to get rid of that heat, as well. Your organs like to be 37 degrees, and your body is used to it being colder than that, so it heats itself up for your organs.

    Now, what happens if the environmental temperature is usually already around 30-40 degrees?
    This happens close to the equator, the whole year, even!

    Well, then your body heats up much less.

    This means someone from Java (right below the equator) has a healthy body temperature of around 36C, while someone from a colder area like Norway has a healthy body temperature of about 37.5 degrees. 1.5 degree may not seem like a big deal, but keep in mind that a 1 degree raise in temperature already means you have a fever!

    This is also why my wife, from Southeast Asia, is incredibly cold here in Northwest Europe, and why I couldn’t enter any store in Indonesia during Covid, cause they scanned my body temperature and 37.5C means you’re very sick over there!

  • InfiniteFlow@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    Your body, as a warm-blooded animal, tries to keep a constant temperature (around 98°F or 37°C). Thing is, the body is constantly producing more heat (your metabolism at work…) and needs to get rid of the excess. If the air around you is at the same temperature as you are, it is very hard for heat exchange to take place (for you to get cooler as the air gets hotter) and, thus, you overheat a bit and feel warm.

    This is why wind makes you feel cooler: it moves the heated air away from your body and brings in new, cooler air, making the exchange more efficient. Evaporation takes heat away as well, hence we sweat to col ourselves down.