How come our body dislikes an outside temperature of 98° F?

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Our bodies are on average 98.6°, right? Why do we sweat profusely and dislike hot temperatures? Wouldn’t our bodies have to work less and use less energy to keep an internal temperature of 98.6°?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

For the most part, your body does not use energy in order to keep up its temperature. Your body uses energy in order to move muscles, to transfer nerve signals, or to convert nutrients into the kind of molecules that make up your body. Most of that energy ultimately ends up as waste heat, and that waste heat has to go somewhere, as your body would otherwise boil itself within a few hours. Those 2000kcal you’re eating every day? That’s – by definition – enough energy to heat 2000 kilograms of water by 1.8°F (1°C), or 50kg (roughly the amount of water in an adult human body) by 72°F (40°C), to a total of 170°F (77°C). According to [this chart](https://www.chefstemp.com/pork-temperature-chart/), and assuming human meat behaves similarly to pork, you’re now slightly beyond “well done”.

In order to avoid becoming a rather chewy piece of long pork, you need to lose that heat somehow. The easiest way is to exist in an environment that is slightly cooler than your body temperature, so you are constantly losing heat to the environment, which is why people feel most comfortable at temperatures around 22°C (70°F).

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