The assumption that the temperature ‘normal’ for a body is 37 degrees it was true in the nineteenth century, when it was formulated, but since then the human body has ‘cooled down’, so much so that the reference body is half a degree lower. This was stated by a Stanford University study published by the magazine eLife.To determine the value of 37 degrees was in 1851 the German physician Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich, who had based himself on a series of measurements mainly to soldiers. American researchers analyzed three distinct body temperature data sets, one taken from army veterans with measurements taken in the years between 1862 and 1930, one dating back to the 1970s and one more recent, between 2007 and 2017 , for a total of almost 700 thousand measures.
The men of 2000, it resulted from the elaboration, are 0.59 degrees Celsius colder than those born in 1800, while the women have ‘lost’ 0.32 degrees. The differences have been calculated taking into account the best equipment available now.
“Physiologically we are different from how we were in the past – say the authors – the environment in which we live has changed, including the temperature of our homes, the microorganisms with which we come into contact and the food we eat».
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