I get that it all starts going wrong past about 40 degrees (104 freedom units)
My question is why are our bodies actually able to heat themselves to a dangerous level? It seems a little counter intuitive
I get that it all starts going wrong past about 40 degrees (104 freedom units)
My question is why are our bodies actually able to heat themselves to a dangerous level? It seems a little counter intuitive
Comments
Do you mean like a fever? Because that’s an immune response and is temporary – the brain/body does a risk analysis and decided that being a little overheated for a short period is worth it to kill a pathogen. Febrile seizures are one of the risks of an extreme fever but you can LIVE with brain damage from a seizure
Cause it kills things.
We die too, but we die far after many microbes die, so we can just not go all the way to perishing.
Whatever you do that doesn’t let your body get rid of the heat will cause a runaway state.
Say you run on a summer noon in the sun and it’s>90% humidity. Say you stay in the sauna for too long. Say you dress up too much in the summer…
Because our ancestors with the genetic variation that allows for that immune response were better adapted to survive infectious diseases
Evolution’s not perfect.
Being unable to kill viruses and bacteria with heat is a lot worse than being able to accidentally overheat to the point of death
Evolution often leaves us with biological processes that are “good enough” but not perfect.
Most of the time, a fever is beneficial. The fact that it can sometimes go too far and kill us wasn’t enough to offset it from being, overall, beneficial to our species’ survival.