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Muscles can also receive messages from the thermoregulatory center of the brain (the hypothalamus) to cause shivering. This increases heat production as respiration is an exothermic reaction in muscle cells. Shivering is more effective than exercise at producing heat because the animal (includes humans) remains still.
Muscle contraction is one such metabolic process generating heat energy, [6] and additional heat results from friction as blood circulates through the vascular system. All organisms metabolize food and other inputs, but some make better use of the output than others.
Thermogenesis is the process of heat production in organisms.It occurs in all warm-blooded animals, and also in a few species of thermogenic plants such as the Eastern skunk cabbage, the Voodoo lily (Sauromatum venosum), and the giant water lilies of the genus Victoria.
There are three distinct types of muscle: skeletal muscle, cardiac or heart muscle, and smooth (non-striated) muscle. Muscles provide strength, balance, posture, movement, and heat for the body to keep warm. [3] There are more than 600 muscles in an adult male human body.
Most often, when the purpose of the muscle activity is to produce motion, the heat is wasted energy. In shivering, the heat is the main intended product and is utilized for warmth. [citation needed] Newborn babies, infants, and young children experience a greater (net) heat loss than adults because of greater surface-area-to-volume ratio.
Starvation response in animals (including humans) is a set of adaptive biochemical and physiological changes, triggered by lack of food or extreme weight loss, in which the body seeks to conserve energy by reducing metabolic rate and/or non-resting energy expenditure to prolong survival and preserve body fat and lean mass.
The resting human body generates about two-thirds of its heat through metabolism in internal organs in the thorax and abdomen, as well as in the brain. The brain generates about 16% of the total heat produced by the body. [8] Heat loss is a major threat to smaller creatures, as they have a larger ratio of surface area to volume.
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.