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Article merged: See old talk-page here: talk:Core temperature
Article merged: See old talk-page here: talk:Temperature examination
Body temperature depends on where it's measured. I attempted to add this text, but the page seems to be "locked for maintanance"
Children have different temperatures (from the fever page of wikipedia) ... what are thos temperatures and normal ranges? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.217.82.96 (talk) 22:32, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Normal human body temperature is a concept that depends on at what point in the body the measurement is made. The value of 36.8 °C ±0.7 °C, or 98.2 °F ±1.3 °F. is the common oral measurement. Rectal measurements, or measurements taken directly inside the body cavity, are typically about a half degree (C) higher. Body temperature of an individual also tends to vary during the day.... External Link
...with that said, when I measure my own oral temperature it's always within about .1F degrees of 98.6, so I'm not at all sure that the quoted 98.6 number is really false precision. Is there an actual histogram of temperatures that demonstrates this assertion that 98.6 is false?
Geoffrey.landis 23:22, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Russians typically measure body armpit temperature, not oral who knows in whose mouth this thermometer has been previous time?), so, this 0.4°C may be not caused by rounding, but by the different technique. Does anyone know what temperature has been measured in this classic German study?--213.148.27.12 21:23, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
CAN YOU DO A "REDIRECT"? I haven't learned how. The title of article is fine as it is. The term usually used in the studies I read is "Core body temperature". It would be good if a search for that term would redirect here. Thanks. Hordaland 09:13, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
In Poland it is also 36.6°C, armpit measure. M3n747 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.206.116.54 (talk) 12:18, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
A few months ago, I think it was in August 2007, there was some health news about some researchers who tried to reproduce Wunderlich's findings. The went to his old University and found his thermometer, used it, and compared the results to digital thermometers. The digital ones repeatedly gave 98.2 where the glass one gave 98.6. Further analysis showed that Wunderlich's thermometer was inaccurate, and that all subsequent thermometers calibrated to his are also inaccurate. For a hundred years we've been using inaccurate instruments. Can somone find this information and update the article, please? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.101.162.81 (talk) 03:01, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
New study confirming what is stated above (that average temperatures are 36.8 degrees C or 98.2 degrees F) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1302471?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=23
Please note that in your "Method of Measurement" section, you quote the following temperature:-
Temperature in the anus (rectum/rectal), vagina, or in the ear (otic) is about 37.6 °C (98.6 °F)
Temperature in the mouth (oral) is about 36.8 °C (98.2 °F)
Temperature under the arm (axillary) is about 36.4 °C (97.6 °F)
There is something amiss with the first line (rectal temp), since converting 37.6 C to fahrenheit in Google yields 99.68 F, not the 98.6 quoted. So either the C or F temperature figure is wrong.
I hope this helps.
Drgao (talk) 00:59, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
Also note that the average "oral" temperature is shown in three places on this page, and all three are different figures. Which is it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.52.47.145 (talk) 08:31, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Against - core temperature seems to be about the liver, etc. in the core of the body. This article is more about everyday measurement, the history of measurement, etc. - details that might get lost in the other. Smallbones (talk) 21:11, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
See discussion here: Talk:Body_temperature#Merge with Normal human body temperature
I've made an attempt to preserve all content while minimizing redundancy and improving flow. More work is certainly needed. --Scray (talk) 04:21, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
As a relatively inexperienced WP editor, I also want to comment that I felt a little out of my depth here, so please forgive me if I messed up this merge. It was complex (two pages into a third), and the discussion was in a strange place - my fault, perhaps, I'm not sure. In any event, my hope is that we now have a starting place for a better page. --Scray (talk) 04:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
The introductory paragraph says the average temperature in the rectum or inside the body cavity is typically half a degree celsius, or 1 degree fahrenheit, higher than the oral temperature. But then below in the Methods of measurement section, it shows the temperature to be higher in the mouth than in the rectum, vagina or ear - please take a look at this, and make it clear, if it is in fact correct, that this is not a discrepancy. thanks ~ GoldenGoose100 (talk) 22:51, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
I removed a factoid that was sourced to a page that prefaced it with I vaguely remember hearing that...., followed by somewhat justified speculation. The factoid was that 98.6 came from unjustified addition of siginificant digits to the conversion of 37 C to F. But reference 1 of the article (A critical appraisal of 98.6 degrees F...) quotes the original source of 37 C as giving it with 3 significant digits.Ccrrccrr (talk) 22:44, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
I read this interview today, and it reminded me of this old conversation. It appears that Wunderlich's thermometer wasn't correctly calibrated. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:56, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
where does it say what causes heat in the body to be produced and where in the body? we need to know that surely??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.103.10.67 (talk) 20:51, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
I have trouble determining whether the article means 36.8 C is the average oral body temperature over 24 hours or it's only the daytime average. It makes a big difference because the temp is low during the night. Anytime, the article is very useful. My daytime oral temp varied from 36.1 to 36.8. I got my blood checked and had low T3 which I corrected. Now my temperature has risen about 0.5 C and I feel much better and more energetic. PS: There should be a section on the flawed Broda Barnes method of measuring body temperature. His proposed minimum healthy temperature range was way too high, it didn't consider the average temp either. 93.161.106.58 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 09:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC).
Here it claims (without citation) that Fahrenheit set body temp at 100° , but all other articles I've seen say he set body temp at 96°. For instance, see Fahrenheit. Can someone verify? Markg17 (talk) 02:26, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
It looks like the Fahrenheit conversions are incorrect or at least inconsistently rounded: 35.5–37.0 °C should be 95.9-98.6 °F not 96-99. If the C is rounded to the 10th , so should the F.
If we're talking about an average and a range, then all numbers should show the range. I suggest we show one decimal place in these ranges.
I originally started this article because people kept saying the normal body temperature was 98.6 (in the USA), and I wanted to know where the ".6" came from. It turns out that someone in Europe had posed 37 °C as normal. This value was then converted from metric units into English units.
In the USA, laymen (i.e., people who don't know much about science) often forget about the concept of a "range". Indeed, many Americans fail to distinguish between mean, mode, and median when talking about an "average"; I daresay most would be hard pressed to define, let alone calculate, these. (I'm currently teaching remedial math at a small private school in Harlem.)
Let's ensure that the article does not perpetuate any misleading ideas about what is normal:
Fair enough? --Uncle Ed (talk) 13:44, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
I've removed the starting part that seems to be a weasel word in my view. I've gave rewriting it a go. -- JaymesKeller (talk) 20:40, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
A Spanish article specifically about human body temperature is necessary: Spanish-language article termorregulación includes both issues. --Correogsk or Gustavo (Eritrocito or Heme aquí) 02:33, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
This article seems to be the best place to show the history of the 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit figure that quite a few generations grew up with. That figure is marked on old mercury thermometers. A possible source would be:
http://www.altmedrev.com/publications/11/4/278.pdf
If this history exists elsewhere in Wikipedia, a link would be useful.Fotoguzzi (talk) 00:37, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
How does the real and/or "accepted cultural myth" "normal" body temperature vary, from country to country, world-wide?-71.174.175.150 (talk) 23:09, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
Does the human body use an absolute temperature reference to establish and maintain the set-point? Basically I am asking how the body knows what temperature corresponds to (say) 98.6 degrees? When designing a mechanical control to maintain a system at some specified temperature T the control would need some absolute reference for that particular temperature. The body does a remarkable job of maintaining a stable temperature, through various homeostasis mechanisms, but how does it know what absolute temperature to drive towards? I hope this makes sense. Thanks! --Lbeaumont (talk) 20:32, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
The lead paragraph of this article says that normal body temperature (as measured by an oral thermometer) is 36.8±0.4 °C (98.2±0.72 °F), but the main text of the article says that it is 36.8±0.5 °C (98.2±0.9 °F). The source cited by the lead says that the upper limit of normal is 37.2°C (98.9°F) at 6:00 A.M. but 37.7°C (99.9°F) at 4:00 P.M. But these are 99th-percentile temperatures, so by the time the temperature reaches that level, something may already be wrong; therefore, I suppose that 37.3 °C (99.1 °F) (the number in the body of the article) may be a good value to settle on (in the lead) as the upper limit of normal. Anyway, even though the body of the article explains these variations in more detail, in my opinion the article should be internally consistent, quoting the same range in the lead and the body. 72.66.65.72 (talk) 01:23, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
There's only passing mention of the hypothalamus's setpoint. An explanation of the mechanisum would be useful. 2605:E000:1C0B:129:7D2B:E424:1EDE:619B (talk) 17:45, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
The text in the article states that "An individual's body temperature typically changes by about 0.5 °C" during the day. But then we have a chart on the right side (supposedly of a healthy individual) where we see a variance of 1.2 ºC. What's wrong? --Savig (talk) 10:14, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
This article has 16 citations to two papers published in the Alternative Medicine Review. Both papers were written by a doctor of naturopathic medicine. In a 2007 discussion, this journal was found to perhaps be reliable since it was listed in pubmed, but I doubt it would pass the current WP:MEDRS standards. Most of the information cited from this journal seems reasonably accurate, so I'm leaving the information in for now. However, the ((medref))
tag needs to remain until we can find better sources. Billhpike (talk) 00:54, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
Under Measurement methods: "Generally, oral, rectal, gut, and core body temperatures...". This is the only place in the article where gut is mentioned, and there is no reference given. And how is gut temperature measured, anyway? Pollifax (talk) 19:41, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
This WSJ article refers to a long-term study done at Stanford University, which established the average body temperature for modern-day humans has declined over the last 2 centuries, to 97.5. The study was published in eLife. ~Anachronist (talk) 14:58, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
In the "2.2 Measurement methods" I changed "otic" to "tympanic" to reduce confusion since the term "otic" is not used anywhere else in the article. Also, while "otic" is somewhat correct, that is, "anything relating to, or located in the region of the ear", (Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary) tympanic is "pertaining to the tympanum (the eardrum)" (MedicineNet.com) which is specifically where in the otic region the measurement is taking place and therefore a more precise term. (Kenyoni (talk) 20:19, 6 June 2020 (UTC))
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect 37°C. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 12#37°C until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. signed, Rosguill talk 16:46, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect 36.6. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 13#36.6 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:26, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect 98.6°F. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 13#98.6°F until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:28, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect 98.6°. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 November 13#98.6° until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:28, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
Someone on reddit writes:[3]
I had never heard that before and the article doesn't mention it. Is there some reasonable sourcing? If yes, it should be added. Thx 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:C115 (talk) 19:45, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
This article and hyperthermia variously spell the term as set point
, set-point
, or setpoint
. Some consistency would be nice, in order to make it easier to use one's browser's "Find text in the current page" feature. 2A0D:6FC2:6A92:3F00:0:0:0:5F9 (talk) 12:56, 10 January 2024 (UTC)