Normal” body temperature is 98.6 degrees F – so why do we feel hot outdoors when temp is in the 80s & 90s?
Good question. If you actually sit in the shade when its 98 degrees out and don’t move, you should be fine, and actually quite comfortable, but when the temp is in the mid 80’s you generally spend more time in the sun, and move around alot, burning calories and making the body do more work, so that makes your body feel warmer, thus causing you to sweat and try to cool down.
When the air outside is closer to our body temperature, it is harder for our bodies to lose heat. We still radiate heat out to our surroundings, but a lot more slowly. If you start exercising, you will start generating heat that you can’t get rid of easily, so you start feeling uncomfortably warm. It’s the same reason it feels so hot when the air is humid. Cooling down by sweating doesn’t work very well because the sweat doesn’t evaporate.
