I’ve been meaning to ask this question forever and I keep forgetting. So here goes:
What is your normal healthy temperature?
When I was growing up I had the usual mercury/glass oral thermometer with the 98.6 marker on it that meant you were OK as long as you didn’t rise above it. I’ve talked to my mom and she swears that when I was a kid, I was always completely normal.
It’s only about five years ago, when I had to have surgery/checkups etc., that it came to light that my “normal” body temperature is now approximately 95.4.
I kept seeing that number when the nurse would take my temperature and finally I asked her what the hell was wrong with me…
And she said, “Oh, 98.6 is just an average! You’re fine!”
If it’s just an average than why is it printed on thermometers? And if I run over a degree cooler than average, does that mean if I’m 98.6 I’m actually running a fever? Should I therefore “add” a degree to a higher temp to figure out how serious it is?
I didn’t ask her–or any other medical professional–these questions, because too much other (surgery related) crap was going on for me to really care at that point.
But now that I’m fine and dandy, years later, it does make me wonder…how many other people aren’t 98.6 degrees? And does that mean we’re weird? My mom admits that her own normal temp tends to run cool…so I guess it’s hereditary? Does it mean I’m prone to anything? NOT prone to anything? And if 98.6 is really just an average, why is it considered standard?
Dopers, what is your normal temperature? Help me out!
Im 94.6 to 95.1is range. It took me working with my doctor to get a note on my navy medical file that if I am at 98 I am running a temperature. That made for some interesting acute care visits - you are at 99, come back when it is over 100 as I stand there weaving, and starting to hallucinate …
On the plus side, my ability to vomit on demand without having to poke my throat helped get me seen … hurk on the admitting corpsmans desk worked like a charm :rolleyes:
I’m going through a condition that entails regular temperature monitoring, and like the OP, was surprised to discover a norm of ~96. All nurses say no biggie, lots of people like that. Much as aruvqan says, “normal” (98.6) means watch out for fever.
Me!! I can play! My normal body temp is 35 degrees C. I’m often cold and my friends refer to me as ‘the lizard’ because I follow patches of sun around the house/garden all day long. Recently I wasn’t well and on taking my temp it was 34.4, my SO asked if I had been dead for several hours…
I often have a hell of a job convincing doctors I have a fever, so I now add on what I am missing. 37 counts as the beginning of a fever, and most people start at 36.2, so I add .8 degrees on to my total whenever talking to doctors.
I had a doctor yell at me once that ‘Medical Science says that you have a fever at 37 degrees, it doesn’t matter where you start from.’ I didn’t go back, it was too weird to see the thermometre at 37.5 and be sitting on the sofa in a track suit, under a blanket, infront of the fire, with the heating on and be shivering with cold…
I suspect mine is slightly low but have not verified it. Whenever I feel I have a fever (maybe a couple of times a year) I take my temp and it’s always below 98.6. I usually can’t be bothered to break out the thermometer when I’m not feeling ill, and I don’t remember to ask when I’m at the doctor. But I figure I fall within the normal range, so I don’t worry about it much.
97.1 is normal for me (36.1°C), which isn’t all that low, but I still get tired of being told “99°? You don’t have a fever.”
98.6 (our “normal”) is 37°C. Is there some disconnect in the U.S. & European norms? I remember reading that our normal was actually abnormally high but I don’t remember what the facts were.
I’m tempted to start checking my temperature regularly to see what my baseline is. Like Rachael Rage, I’m often surprised when I have all the other symptoms that always accompany fevers for me (mild headache, lower backache, and pain and dull pressure behind my eyes), and my digital thermometer gives me a 98.9 or thereabouts. It’s not unusual for me to see numbers in the 97 range - when I was younger and Mom made me take my temperature every time I had a cough, she’d see the number and tell me I must not be holding it in my mouth right. Maybe she’s right, I dunno.
I generally run around 96 degrees, and I get worried when I hit 98 or 99. However, when I was sick a few weeks ago my wife said I felt warm and took my temp. It was 93. I’m still not sure why it was so low (several attempts over the next hour or two reaffirmed the reading). I was back up 95 and normalish the next day.
For some reason as a kid I always ran hot. So whenever my mom took my temperature (like if I said I didn’t feel like going to school), it was above 98.6. So I got to stay home from school!
But eventually, after I didn’t get my routine immunizations because I had a “slight fever,” my doctor told her that some people had different body temperaturs and yeah, 98.6 (or whatever it is) was an average.
I have no idea if this is still the case. Haven’t taken my own temp in years and years. But one of my kids had the same thing going, and they still won’t give you immunizations if your temp is elevated, at least not the first few times.
My normal body temp is around 99.5 - I don’t worry until my temp breaks 101, or if it drops below 97 actually - I find that I feel vastly worse when my body temperature is low than when it’s high.
I’m usually around 97 or so. I find that I suffer from the heat more than most people. Don’t know why that is but if the temp is even in the upper 80’s I’m sweating like pig. I should add that as a toddler, I had a temp of 108 once and I wonder if that messed with my internal thermostat…
I think I probably run low, I’ve taken my temp a few times and got mid-97’s to low 98’s. But I also often take my temp when I feel sick and get 99ish, so I think that is actually a slight fever for me. I am also sensitive to cold. Sometimes I think it might be nice to have one of those warming rocks for pet snakes and lizards, but in a giant size, to keep in my living room.
My normal is 95 - 96, but has been as low as 93 – which freaked the ER nurse right out. My body temperature tends to drop when I get sick, but I have had actual fevers, too. FWIW, I also have always had very low blood pressure (anything over 110/70 is high for me) and exceedingly slow respiratory rate (I remember the recovery nurse being freaked out after my abdominoplasty, and making me count with her – 11 breaths in one minute), so when I go to the ER and my vitals are normal for me, they begin treating me for shock until I explain (and usually have to have my husband explain) that those are normal. On one visit, years ago, the nurse actually went through 7 machines thinking they were all broken before taking my pulse/bp/temp the old fashioned way. She simply refused to believe me that my vitals were that low and I was still coherent – that was the time my temp was 93.
Interesting topic, I was just thinking about this the other day. My 18-month-old son was running a temp of 104.7, and I was thinking about how much hotter that is than my normal 97.
It made me start to wonder if a lower body temperature might be the reason I seem to sweat a lot more, or react to the heat before other people do. Is there anything to this, or am I just being foolish?