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Body Heat: Temperature and Life on Earth
Whether you're a polar bear giving birth to cubs in an Arctic winter, a camel going days without water in the desert heat, or merely a suburbanite without air conditioning in a heat wave, your comfort and even survival depend on how well you adapt to extreme temperatures.
In this entertaining and illuminating book, biopsychologist Mark Blumberg explores the many ways that temperature rules the lives of all animals (including us). He moves from the physical principles that govern the flow of heat in and out of our bodies to the many complex evolutionary devices animals use to exploit those principles for their own benefit.
In the process Blumberg tells wonderful stories of evolutionary and scientific ingenuity--how penguins withstand Antarctic winters by huddling together by the thousands, how vulnerable embryos of many species are to extremes of temperature during their development, why people survive hour-long drowning accidents in winter but not in summer, how certain plants generate heat (the skunk cabbage enough to melt snow around it). We also hear of systems gone awry--how desert species given too much water can drink themselves into bloated immobility, why anorexics often complain of feeling cold, and why you can't sleep if the room is too hot or too cold. After reading this book, you'll never look at a thermostat in quite the same way again.
In this entertaining and illuminating book, biopsychologist Mark Blumberg explores the many ways that temperature rules the lives of all animals (including us). He moves from the physical principles that govern the flow of heat in and out of our bodies to the many complex evolutionary devices animals use to exploit those principles for their own benefit.
In the process Blumberg tells wonderful stories of evolutionary and scientific ingenuity--how penguins withstand Antarctic winters by huddling together by the thousands, how vulnerable embryos of many species are to extremes of temperature during their development, why people survive hour-long drowning accidents in winter but not in summer, how certain plants generate heat (the skunk cabbage enough to melt snow around it). We also hear of systems gone awry--how desert species given too much water can drink themselves into bloated immobility, why anorexics often complain of feeling cold, and why you can't sleep if the room is too hot or too cold. After reading this book, you'll never look at a thermostat in quite the same way again.
- GenresScience
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 14, 2016
I picked up this book for an odd--and potentially disconcerting--reason. I sweat when I work out. I know that everyone sweats while active, but for me it’s preternatural. It’s at a level that has the potential to be a superpower, if I had any control of it. I’ve finished muaythai sessions with the ring floor looking like it’d rained inside—granted Thailand takes humidity to its heights, but still. I was hoping to gain some insight into what this anomaly was all about. After reading the book, I can’t say I have any greater insight on the issue. However, having lived in the tropics for over three years now, I’ve recently begun to notice that my level of sweating seems normal—at least within a range acceptable for our species.
There are nine chapters. The first examines the basics of heat. While the examples are zoological, the substance is largely what one would study in an introductory physics class—sans the math. Chapter 2 dips more into the biology, considering the various ways in which organisms achieve an ideal temperature. The third chapter explores the role that temperature plays in impregnation, gestation, and genetic information transfer.
Chapter 4 explains how various creatures work internally to create a comfortable temperature. It’s related to chapter 2, but the second chapter deals more with external regulation, i.e. animals’ interaction with their environments. Besides explaining the human need to control the brain’s temperature, chapter 4 explores how birds who keep their feet in chilly water manage to keep from getting hypothermia. In the next chapter, Blumberg considers various ways in which animals fight the cold. There’s an extended discussion of Brown Adipose Tissue (BAT)--a fat that is particularly useful in generating heat--that was interesting.
Chapter 6 raises an intriguing question: should one take fever reducer when one develops a fever? Obviously, a fever can become so high that one needs to combat it, but here we’re talking about a fever of a level that won’t cause any long-term harm. Chapter 7 discusses a range of heat related topics including the connection between spiciness and the feeling of heat and the evolution of language related to heat, but the chapter is mostly about the thermal dimension of sex.
Chapter 8 is about how our body regulates fat so that it can be used both as an energy reserve and as insulation, and what can go wrong with the process. The final chapter addresses the thermal dimension of sleep. If you’ve ever woken up soaked in sweat or chilled, it may have occurred to you that our thermal regulation doesn’t work as usual through sleep.
There is a point in the Introduction that reads as though the author is calling Tibetan Buddhists monks charlatans, and that seems both harsh and offensive. However, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he used an example in unfortunate juxtaposition to his charlatan comment—which is well taken. He’s referring to monks who wrap themselves in wet sheets in subfreezing conditions. His point is that it’s not a suspension of the laws of physics that the monks don’t end up with hypothermia—true enough. The monks’ point is likely that it’s a tremendous challenge to be able to maintain a tranquil mind under such conditions, which I would argue is true as well.
There are only a few graphics, and they consist of tables, line drawings, and photos. There is an extensive bibliography that is organized by chapter.
The Kindle version of the book that I have has some formatting irregularities. However, they didn’t really detract from the reading experience, and will probably be corrected in newer editions. [But it wasn’t an ARC, so the formatting should have been finalized.]
I found this book to be interesting, and I learned a lot from reading it. It’s an important topic, but for many it won’t be a subject that one thinks of learning about in isolation. If you are interested in finding out more about the many ways in which animals (humans included) are influenced by temperature, I’d recommend you give this book a look.
There are nine chapters. The first examines the basics of heat. While the examples are zoological, the substance is largely what one would study in an introductory physics class—sans the math. Chapter 2 dips more into the biology, considering the various ways in which organisms achieve an ideal temperature. The third chapter explores the role that temperature plays in impregnation, gestation, and genetic information transfer.
Chapter 4 explains how various creatures work internally to create a comfortable temperature. It’s related to chapter 2, but the second chapter deals more with external regulation, i.e. animals’ interaction with their environments. Besides explaining the human need to control the brain’s temperature, chapter 4 explores how birds who keep their feet in chilly water manage to keep from getting hypothermia. In the next chapter, Blumberg considers various ways in which animals fight the cold. There’s an extended discussion of Brown Adipose Tissue (BAT)--a fat that is particularly useful in generating heat--that was interesting.
Chapter 6 raises an intriguing question: should one take fever reducer when one develops a fever? Obviously, a fever can become so high that one needs to combat it, but here we’re talking about a fever of a level that won’t cause any long-term harm. Chapter 7 discusses a range of heat related topics including the connection between spiciness and the feeling of heat and the evolution of language related to heat, but the chapter is mostly about the thermal dimension of sex.
Chapter 8 is about how our body regulates fat so that it can be used both as an energy reserve and as insulation, and what can go wrong with the process. The final chapter addresses the thermal dimension of sleep. If you’ve ever woken up soaked in sweat or chilled, it may have occurred to you that our thermal regulation doesn’t work as usual through sleep.
There is a point in the Introduction that reads as though the author is calling Tibetan Buddhists monks charlatans, and that seems both harsh and offensive. However, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he used an example in unfortunate juxtaposition to his charlatan comment—which is well taken. He’s referring to monks who wrap themselves in wet sheets in subfreezing conditions. His point is that it’s not a suspension of the laws of physics that the monks don’t end up with hypothermia—true enough. The monks’ point is likely that it’s a tremendous challenge to be able to maintain a tranquil mind under such conditions, which I would argue is true as well.
There are only a few graphics, and they consist of tables, line drawings, and photos. There is an extensive bibliography that is organized by chapter.
The Kindle version of the book that I have has some formatting irregularities. However, they didn’t really detract from the reading experience, and will probably be corrected in newer editions. [But it wasn’t an ARC, so the formatting should have been finalized.]
I found this book to be interesting, and I learned a lot from reading it. It’s an important topic, but for many it won’t be a subject that one thinks of learning about in isolation. If you are interested in finding out more about the many ways in which animals (humans included) are influenced by temperature, I’d recommend you give this book a look.
July 14, 2019
Interesting topic but oversimplified
Body Heat is an introduction to how living things regulate their internal temperature in the face of changing external circumstances. It is aimed at a general readership and written in a non-technical style. Although published by the Harvard University Press and handsomely presented, this is not as rigorously scientific as one might like.
First of all there are no footnotes so that some of University of Iowa psychology Professor Mark Blumberg's assertions are without reference. In a work aimed at the general public this is perhaps acceptable, even preferable; however when some of the assertions are a bit puzzling, it would be agreeable to have some attribution.
For example, Blumberg claims that the ancestors of the Pima Indians of southern Arizona (whom he is writing about because they have low levels of leptin which "predisposes them to fat storage") "have lived in North America for 30,000 years." (p. 182) From everything I know about the settlements in North America, there are none that go back 30,000 years. Perhaps this is a very recent discovery. If so, he should cite the source.
Or, consider Figure 8 on page 179. This is a black and white photo of two mice, "one bred for obesity (left) and the other a normal mouse..." On the facing page 178 the obese "mouse" is identified as a db/db (for diabetes) mouse, yet the text suggests that it is more likely a ob/ob (for obese) mouse. Maybe I have this wrong, but what REALLY bothers me about the photo is that I think those white mice are really white RATS and the wrong picture (or text) was used!
Or, on page 175 Blumberg writes that "a pound of fat holds twice as much energy as does a pound of sugar or protein." Actually it holds more like 2.25 times as much energy. There are nine calories in a gram of fat and four in either a gram of sugar or protein. Since I'm sure Blumberg knows this I can only attribute his expression to either a desire on the part of his publisher to "keep it simple" and avoid fractions, or because in the metabolism of fat some energy is lost. If the former is the reason, he should have insisted in the interest of accuracy on the more precise expression; and if the latter, he should have told us so. In either case, we are left wondering if we are being "dumbed down."
This simplistic approach, a kind of creeping casualness about what is and what isn't so, may lead the reader to wonder about the strict accuracy of other statements in the book. For example, on page 158 we learn that the psychologist Craig Anderson asserts that in high heat conditions (hot days) there is an increase in human violence and aggression. This seems reasonable enough. However Blumberg then cites Anderson as suggesting that "if global warming trends continue, an increase in average temperature by" two degrees fahrenheit "will result in 24,000 additional murders each year in the United States." This is startling, so much so I would like to have some of the evidence and the reasoning leading to his conclusion. But Blumberg does not provide any. He does however cite a research paper by Anderson in the bibliography.
Another example of Blumberg really needing to tell us more than he does is from page 188 where he writes that on a "practical level" leptin is not likely to help the average overweight person because "leptin costs nearly $200 per milligram." Problem here is, how much leptin would one need--a milligram a month or perhaps a milligram a day? Again Blumberg doesn't say.
This casualness of expression is really a shame because in perhaps the most interesting part of the book, in the chapter entitled "Livin' Off the Fat," Blumberg presents some evidence that anorexia nervosa may to some degree be a disease caused by a thermoregulatory dysfunction. (pp. 191-196) Unfortunately before he presents this argument he writes that the "discrepancy between the physical realities faced by most women and the messages portrayed by a minority of women who are so thin that many of them no longer have menstrual cycles has helped to generate a steady increase in the incidence of anorexia nervosa over the last twenty years." (p. 188)
I'm not sure what this means, except it sounds a lot like the usual lament about how the fashion media is in some sense responsible for anorexia. Yet, he doesn't exactly say that, does he? What he really says is that some "women" have "helped to... increase" anorexia!
Finally on page 204 Blumberg notes that there are "many theories, some of them silly and some of them intriguing" as to why we behave as we do in REM sleep. However, he just leaves it at that without mentioning any of them except to say that temperature is a factor.
On the plus side, there is a lot of interesting information in the book about how heat and cold affect us and other animals, and plants. I was surprised to learn that plants can heat themselves, that the skunk cabbage, for example, can melt snow (p. 92), and that some plants may be using heat instead of aroma or color to attract pollinating insects (p. 93). Also interesting is the little known fact that the skin of polar bears is actually black (to absorb as much of the sun's heat as possible) while its fur of course appears white to match the snow and ice of its environment.
Bottom line: this is definitely worth reading; however I think the decision to avoid being technical and explanatory work against the value of the book.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
Body Heat is an introduction to how living things regulate their internal temperature in the face of changing external circumstances. It is aimed at a general readership and written in a non-technical style. Although published by the Harvard University Press and handsomely presented, this is not as rigorously scientific as one might like.
First of all there are no footnotes so that some of University of Iowa psychology Professor Mark Blumberg's assertions are without reference. In a work aimed at the general public this is perhaps acceptable, even preferable; however when some of the assertions are a bit puzzling, it would be agreeable to have some attribution.
For example, Blumberg claims that the ancestors of the Pima Indians of southern Arizona (whom he is writing about because they have low levels of leptin which "predisposes them to fat storage") "have lived in North America for 30,000 years." (p. 182) From everything I know about the settlements in North America, there are none that go back 30,000 years. Perhaps this is a very recent discovery. If so, he should cite the source.
Or, consider Figure 8 on page 179. This is a black and white photo of two mice, "one bred for obesity (left) and the other a normal mouse..." On the facing page 178 the obese "mouse" is identified as a db/db (for diabetes) mouse, yet the text suggests that it is more likely a ob/ob (for obese) mouse. Maybe I have this wrong, but what REALLY bothers me about the photo is that I think those white mice are really white RATS and the wrong picture (or text) was used!
Or, on page 175 Blumberg writes that "a pound of fat holds twice as much energy as does a pound of sugar or protein." Actually it holds more like 2.25 times as much energy. There are nine calories in a gram of fat and four in either a gram of sugar or protein. Since I'm sure Blumberg knows this I can only attribute his expression to either a desire on the part of his publisher to "keep it simple" and avoid fractions, or because in the metabolism of fat some energy is lost. If the former is the reason, he should have insisted in the interest of accuracy on the more precise expression; and if the latter, he should have told us so. In either case, we are left wondering if we are being "dumbed down."
This simplistic approach, a kind of creeping casualness about what is and what isn't so, may lead the reader to wonder about the strict accuracy of other statements in the book. For example, on page 158 we learn that the psychologist Craig Anderson asserts that in high heat conditions (hot days) there is an increase in human violence and aggression. This seems reasonable enough. However Blumberg then cites Anderson as suggesting that "if global warming trends continue, an increase in average temperature by" two degrees fahrenheit "will result in 24,000 additional murders each year in the United States." This is startling, so much so I would like to have some of the evidence and the reasoning leading to his conclusion. But Blumberg does not provide any. He does however cite a research paper by Anderson in the bibliography.
Another example of Blumberg really needing to tell us more than he does is from page 188 where he writes that on a "practical level" leptin is not likely to help the average overweight person because "leptin costs nearly $200 per milligram." Problem here is, how much leptin would one need--a milligram a month or perhaps a milligram a day? Again Blumberg doesn't say.
This casualness of expression is really a shame because in perhaps the most interesting part of the book, in the chapter entitled "Livin' Off the Fat," Blumberg presents some evidence that anorexia nervosa may to some degree be a disease caused by a thermoregulatory dysfunction. (pp. 191-196) Unfortunately before he presents this argument he writes that the "discrepancy between the physical realities faced by most women and the messages portrayed by a minority of women who are so thin that many of them no longer have menstrual cycles has helped to generate a steady increase in the incidence of anorexia nervosa over the last twenty years." (p. 188)
I'm not sure what this means, except it sounds a lot like the usual lament about how the fashion media is in some sense responsible for anorexia. Yet, he doesn't exactly say that, does he? What he really says is that some "women" have "helped to... increase" anorexia!
Finally on page 204 Blumberg notes that there are "many theories, some of them silly and some of them intriguing" as to why we behave as we do in REM sleep. However, he just leaves it at that without mentioning any of them except to say that temperature is a factor.
On the plus side, there is a lot of interesting information in the book about how heat and cold affect us and other animals, and plants. I was surprised to learn that plants can heat themselves, that the skunk cabbage, for example, can melt snow (p. 92), and that some plants may be using heat instead of aroma or color to attract pollinating insects (p. 93). Also interesting is the little known fact that the skin of polar bears is actually black (to absorb as much of the sun's heat as possible) while its fur of course appears white to match the snow and ice of its environment.
Bottom line: this is definitely worth reading; however I think the decision to avoid being technical and explanatory work against the value of the book.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews