As temperatures and humidity soar outside, what’s happening inside the human body can become a life-or-death battle decided by just a few degrees. The critical danger point outdoors for illness and death from is several degrees lower than experts once thought, say researchers who put people in hot boxes to see what happens to them. With much of the , , and the suffering through blistering heat waves, , several doctors, physiologists and other experts explained to The Associated Press what happens to the human body in such heat.
Key body temperature The body’s resting core temperature is typically about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius). That’s only 7 degrees (4 Celsius) away from catastrophe in the form of heatstroke, said Ollie Jay, a professor of heat and health at the University of Sydney in Australia, where he runs the thermoergonomics laboratory.
Dr. Neil Gandhi, emergency medicine director at Houston Methodist Hospital, said during heat waves anyone who comes in with a fever of 102 or higher and no clear source of infection will be looked at for heat exhaustion or the more severe heatstroke. “We routinely will see core temperatures greater than 104, 105 degrees during some of the heat episodes,” Gandhi said.
Another degree or three and such a patient is at high risk of death, he said. How heat kills Heat kills in three main ways, Jay said. The usual first suspect is heatstroke — critical increases in body temperature that cause organs to fail.
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