I was recently sick and my body temperature was 38.6°C. It felt like I was in a refrigerator.
So, why do we feel cold when we have a high body temperature? Shouldn’t we feel hot instead?
In: Biology
The body works kind of like a thermostat, in that it has a set temperature that it wants to be at. Just like a thermostat, when it gets hotter or colder than it wants to be, it starts doing stuff to get back to the temperature it prefers, like shiver to produce heat when it’s too cold, or sweat to cool down when it’s too warm.
When we get sick, however, fighting the infection is more important to the body than staying at the temperature it usually prefers. It also knows that becoming hotter will help fight the infection. The way it gets hotter is that it increases the set point of the thermostat, which in effect makes it work to become hotter by tricking it into believing that it’s freezing.
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