Why doesn’t every temperature under 98.6F/37C feel cold to us?

Question

I would think any temperature under our natural body temp would feel cold. To take it further, I live in the north, so 75 can start feeling hot to me, yet people in the south might consider that chilly. We both have the same body temp so how does that work?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Your body constantly generates heat, and needs to shed that heat. The temperature we are most confortable at is the temperature we can shed that excess body heat the easiest; in high heat, even below 37ºC, we can’t shed heat and we quickly overheat, so our body tries to warn us by making us feel uncomfortably hot at those temperatures to try to move somewhere else.