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There has been a great deal of research done on developmental adjustment, acclimatization, and cultural practices, but less research on genetic adaptations to colder and hotter temperatures. The human body always works to remain in homeostasis. One form of homeostasis is thermoregulation.
As physical work is performed, the body's natural thermoregulation (i.e. sweating) becomes ineffective. This is compounded by increased work rates, high ambient temperature and humidity levels, and direct exposure to the sun. The net effect is that desired protection from some environmental threats inadvertently increases the threat of heat stress.
This behaviour is compared with norms and is deemed either adaptive or ineffective. The second step is concerned with factors that influence behaviour. Stimuli are classified as focal, contextual or residual. [2] The nursing diagnosis is the statement of the ineffective behaviours along with the identification of the probable cause.
As in other mammals, human thermoregulation is an important aspect of homeostasis. In thermoregulation, body heat is generated mostly in the deep organs, especially the liver, brain, and heart, and in contraction of skeletal muscles. [1] Humans have been able to adapt to a great diversity of climates, including hot humid and hot arid.
Temperature control (thermoregulation) is a homeostatic mechanism that keeps the organism at optimum operating temperature, as the temperature affects the rate of chemical reactions. In humans, the average internal temperature is widely accepted to be 37 °C (98.6 °F), a "normal" temperature established in the 1800s.
Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different. A thermoconforming organism, by contrast, simply adopts the surrounding temperature as its own body temperature, thus avoiding the need for internal thermoregulation.
Heat stroke occurs when thermoregulation is overwhelmed by a combination of excessive metabolic production of heat (exertion), excessive heat in the physical environment, and insufficient or impaired heat loss, resulting in an abnormally high body temperature.
Profound hypothermia (< 14 °C) usually isn't used clinically. It is a subject of research in animals and human clinical trials. As of 2012, the lowest body temperature ever survived by a human being was 9 °C (48 °F) as part of a hypothermic circulatory arrest experiment to treat cancer in 1957.