Decreasing human body temperature in the United States since the Industrial Revolution.

Abstract

In the US, the normal, oral temperature of adults is, on average, lower than the canonical 37{degrees}C established in the 19th century. We postulated that body temperature has decreased over time. Using measurements from three cohorts--the Union Army Veterans of the Civil War (N=23,710; measurement years 1860-1940), the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey I (N=15,301; 1971-1975), and the Stanford Translational Research Integrated Database Environment (N=150,280; 2007-2017)--we determined that mean body temperature in men and women, after adjusting for age, height, weight and, in some models date and time of day, has decreased monotonically by 0.03{degrees}C per birth decade. A similar decline within the Union Army cohort as between cohorts, makes measurement error an unlikely explanation. This substantive and continuing shift in body temperature--a marker for metabolic rate--provides a framework for understanding changes in body habitus and human longevity over the last 200 years.