our natural body temperature being too hot for us is bullshit
2026-04-23 02:34 UTC
Replies (18)
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@AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-04-23 03:32
Hate the laws of thermodynamics? Put that hatred to good use and become a mechanical engineer! Doesn’t matter if it’s aerospace or manufacturing! We all hate that doing fun stuff generates heat, so we design complicated systems to make things like 1% more thermodynamically efficient 👍 (This sounded funnier in my head)
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@dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works 2026-04-24 11:58
See also that YOUR temperature drops overnight. Your body temp goes down about 2 degrees overnight starting at the same time your body starts releasing melatonin before bed. This means as you start to wake up you also start to warm up, so you're partially at fault here too!
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@Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-04-23 13:49
Your natural body temperature is not uncomfortable for you, it's natural because it's perfect for you. What you don't like is *ambient* temperature to be equal or higher than the body temperature, because that means that your body now has to do more work to get to the optimal, natural body temperature. Equating ambient and body temperature is just a mental fallacy you've fallen victim of, you could just as well say "oh 25°C being perfect for us is bullshit". Why is it bullshit? You don't like the number? It just doesn't mean anything. As to the topic at hand... I don't understand why you can't just remove/add layers of blankets dynamically based on the temperature around you?
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@shneancy@lemmy.world 2026-04-23 10:27
our natural body temperature does its best to perfectly balance out to 36.6C, but you are a biological machine, you keep generating heat by just existing, and you need to release the excess. it's much easier when the air around you is colder, but when it's starting to reach the same temperature as your body then your the "uh oh sweating time" triggers to help you along
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@lawrencenumbers@lemmy.world 2026-04-24 18:24
I had the same thing today. Although, it would be rude not to give booze and night terrors their share of the credit too.
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@474D@lemmy.world 2026-04-23 03:48
Ah yes, damn our natural state of multiple blankets
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@Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 2026-04-23 04:32
Some basic math - we're a species who's body generates heat, so works best in conditions with a temperature lower than our body temp. Otherwise we need to sweat to efficiently transfer heat.
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@FishFace@piefed.social 2026-04-23 11:09
All animals are producing heat by metabolism, and so are naturally hotter than their environments. Being in an environment that is as hot as your ideal body temperature means your metabolism raises your temperature above the ideal. The only way around this is active cooling - like sweating - which is generally uncomfortable as a signal that you are expending energy on keeping cool and try and get somewhere cooler where you won't have to expend as much energy on that.
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@tiredofsametab@fedia.io 2026-04-23 08:40
Is going to be earlier and waking just before things start heating up an option? Here in rural northeastern Japan, we do that to beat the heat of the day for work outside (getting up right around 4 or a bit before when days are their longest) and a lot of folks are asleep by 20 or 21.
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@HubertManne@piefed.social 2026-04-23 17:25
yeah and its like a temp feels fine one day and not another. thing is I love covers and the feeling of being bundled up in one or near a fire. So like its kinda nice being cold. Similary its great for it to be hot when you have a place to swim. The cool water feels so nice.
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@Staff@piefed.world 2026-04-24 10:48
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@paraphrand@lemmy.world 2026-04-23 07:41
Memory foam traps heat. And is your blood sugar good? It might not be either of these things, but they are worth crossing off the list of reasons. Along with what the other poster said about synthetic fabrics.
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@chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 2026-04-24 17:31
Temperature is a human invention, it doesn’t exist in nature. What exists in nature are particles with differing amounts of thermal and kinetic energy. Temperature is a measurement of the average kinetic energy of the particles in an area. But just like with the average height of people in a room, there’s no guarantee that any particular particle is equal to that average. Now, having got that out of the way, the way our bodies work is that they seek a thermodynamic equilibrium. That is, they try to match the amount of heat (thermal energy) lost through the skin to the amount of heat produced internally by metabolic processes. One way to achieve this is through the evaporation of sweat. This requires good airflow, however, which heavy blankets prevent.
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@tristynalxander@mander.xyz 2026-04-27 01:09
This is entirely inconsistent with my experience, so I suspect there is no correlation. My polyester shirts are silky and breathable, and my cotton blankets are rough and scratchy. I'm sure you have your on experiences that seem to validate your view, so I suspect there is no correlation. Perhaps there is some other processing factor that determines how comfortable or breathable a fabric turns out to be. Only difference I've reliably seen between cotton and polyester is that cotton degrades faster, which makes you buy clothes more often. If you throw clothes away a lot, cotton is better for the environment. If you wear clothes until they're unusable, polyester is better for the environment.
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@Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 2026-04-23 04:30
Preach! With some very specific exceptions, natural fibers are far better. Give me a wool blanket or sweater (jumper in your terms I believe). Wool is freakin magic. My only exception is workout gear - the specialty synthetics are fantastic.
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@Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 2026-04-23 10:47
I second this. I'm almost always too hot and realized years ago that polyester fabrics made it worse. It's one of the reasons my ex and I used different blankets - I used a 100% cotton sheet, but he was the type of person who's usually cold, so he used fuzzy polyester blankets. He thought my blanket was too light, while I thought his was too hot. The struggle to avoid polyester is the hardest part. I have a significant yarn collection for all my art projects, but over the past few years I've been trying to avoid polyesters (to avoid contributing to microplastics.) The only polyesters I bought since then were either made of recycled materials, or were special glow-in-the-dark kinds (because I haven't found cotton or bamboo yarn with that feature yet.)
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@Malyca@lemmy.zip 2026-04-23 15:34
Of synthetic, I can recommend rayon (that's made from bamboo), also known as viscose. While it is synthetic, it breathes wonderfully.
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@tristynalxander@mander.xyz 2026-04-27 01:45
Did you know it's better for the environment to keep an old gas car running than to buy a new electric vehicle? It's the same principle. One Polyester shirt that lasts 20 years is better than 20 cotton shirts degrading year after year.