WHat is the importance of body temperature?

Question

Why is body temperature 98.6 degrees farenheit

Answer 1

your body needs certain biochemical reactions to work. for example to digest food a lot of the enzyme dont work at colder temperatures. why its exactly 98.6, i dont know. cats have a higher body temperature, reptiles a lower. its porbably related to size and shape of hte animal aswell.

98.6 is probably the most efficient, or the result of our own body mass and suface area.

Answer 2

That is actually a hard question with an unsatisfactory answer.

We have evolved to that temperature. It is sort of a compromise between different needs between different body systems and functions. Much colder and most of our internal chemical reactions would be slower and harder to speed up when needed. Much higher and the opposite happens, some reaction would go too fast for "cheaply" controlled functions.

Our temperature doesn't have to be 98.6. Other mammals temperatures are a few degrees higher or lower, fitting their life styles.

Answer 3

Yea all of above but also something that maybe should be said is that the sperms of a male need a certain temperature to evolve properly, too high temperature(only a few degrees over normal) and the rate of spontaneous mutation increases drastically.

Answer 4

That's the temperature at which our biological processes were designed to operate. It's not precise, that's just an average. It varies among people, activities, time of day, and general health. The regulation process is called homeostasis. Your body raises its temperature to help fight infection (fever) and lowers it during sleep. Humans can tolerate some variance for short periods of time. Other animals are designed for different body temperatures. Cold-blooded animals (like most reptiles) don't do homeostasis at all.

Answer 5

if we go above or below that average at a significant rate, our body is cganging for mostly the bad things like sikness or disease or some of the times growing.

notice when u have a fever and u have a core body temperature of 100 degrees . f.

that change is very significant even if it only by 1 degree