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posted by martyb on Monday January 20 2020, @02:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the you're-as-cold-as-ice dept.

The planet may be warming, but a recent study indicates that mankind is going the other direction.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have established that people's bodies are now typically cooler than the textbook figure of 37C, first established by German physician Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich in 1868.

The study shows that modern-day men have a body temperature 0.58C lower than their 19th century counterparts, while women's are 0.32C lower.

This decrease has been attributed to "changes in our environment over the past 200 years, which have in turn driven physiological changes". However, the study acknowledges that establishing cause and effect remains "inherently unprovable".

The rate of decline is about 0.03°C per birth decade. Body temperature is a marker for metabolic rate and could partially explain changes in human health and longevity over time.

Journal Reference:
Myroslava Protsiv, Catherine Ley, Joanna Lankester, Trevor Hastie, Julie Parsonnet. Decreasing human body temperature in the United States since the Industrial Revolution, (DOI: doi:10.7554/eLife.49555)


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  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday January 20 2020, @10:43PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Monday January 20 2020, @10:43PM (#946040) Journal

    Yes, because clearly the way we are measuring multi-decadal single degree global changes in temperature is by going outside and saying if it's chilly or not.

    This joke would be a lot more funny if you weren't constantly making claims that are equal in stupidity to this one.

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