How hot is the human hotness?

about the episode

This week was the warmest day on record worldwide on average. June was also the warmest June on record worldwide. Records that are destined to be broken again and again.

But when is somewhere too hot for us humans? According to a researcher from England, the maximum is between 40 and 50 degrees. According to him, the problem lies in our resting metabolism: the amount of energy we need to function at rest. It will accelerate in very warm temperatures.

If it’s very hot outside, your breathing increases and your heart rate goes up. The body temperature rises, but it no longer loses heat properly. This may cause nausea, confusion, dizziness, headache, and fainting.

In 2021, the researcher will publish the first results of a series of heat experiments. While 28 degrees and 50 percent humidity is still under control for most people, we’re having trouble at 40 degrees, he says. Especially at low humidity. At 50 degrees and 50 percent humidity, things just go wrong. The body temperature rises by one degree and the heart rate increases by an average of 64 percent. Sweating will not help in this case.

How bad you get depends, among other things, on how long you’ve been exposed to that temperature. The researchers speculate that it must have been fatal at some point, but they clearly didn’t wait for that in the experiments.

In the latter tests, they mainly looked at heart activity. Interesting in itself, because measuring equipment isn’t really designed to operate in 50 degrees and 25 percent humidity. They saw, among other things, that the heart rates of women at this temperature were, on average, much higher than those of men.

Well, all of this is not enough, more research is needed to say something about what exactly will happen in the body when exposed to such intense heat for so long. Then there is also the psychological aspect of working in very hot temperatures and the differences between individuals. But as temperatures rise, this kind of research is sorely needed. Obviously, your body gets heavier inside when the temperature rises. So take it easy when the sun is shining.

Read more here: How hot is ‘extreme heat’ for humans? Previous work by this researcher: The upper metabolic critical temperature of the thermoneutral zone for humans.