eli5 How does such a small difference in human body temperature make such drastic differences? Ex:98° compared to 102°
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Believe it or not your body temperature can vary through the day (and your lifetime) without major impact. When we are younger a higher temperature is actually more common and our average lowers as we age. Individuals vary a bit from each other too, but between 98° and 99° seems to be the sweet spot. Why, you ask?
Fungus. No seriously. Scientists looked into it and found that our body temperature is actually balanced between being high enough to be in hospital to most fungal infections but low enough not to require greater caloric intake. Mammals evolved to avoid fungal infections which are far more prevalent in our cold blooded distant cousins such as reptiles and amphibians.
However our body chemistry also evolved around that temperature too so getting too far off, either too high or too low has increasingly bad consequences. You will generally be fine with a slightly higher or lower temperature for a short time, but if it persists or if it becomes more extreme your bodies processes start to malfunction or break down. Millions of years of evolution have found a sweet spot so it’s better to stay like that for now.
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