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Author | Topic: Re-activation of the human thermoregulating functions | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
arno Inactive Member |
It's pretty normal that people are always looking for the most comfortable place to stay. You can use clothing, conditioned buildings of food to reach this "comfortzone". I think this search for comfort resulted in a big loss of thermoregulating-funcions of the human-body. I'm not a real scientist, but we made a pretty big collection of thermographic images about this topic (Nutscode.com is for sale | HugeDomains). My first conclusion is that most animals are thermographicly very "goodlooking", they know how to keep there bodytemperature at a stable level. Most humans are pretty ugly when you look at them through an infrared camera. If you put a human outside in his underwear, the thermographic image would probably look something like the thermographic image of a shaven rabbit.
I didn't search the entire forum about this topic, but I would like to discuss some creative options to re-activate these skills again. Taking cold showers, thermo-neutral fashion, things like that.
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AdminFaith Inactive Member |
Moved to Coffee House from Re-activation of the human thermoregulating functions in Proposed New Topics Forum.
Edited by AdminFaith, : forgot Admin mode
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arno Inactive Member |
Dear Administrators of evc-forum,
I can understand the first impression of nutscode beng spam, it's an open source-project, the nutscode itself (total amount of your energybills) is not protected and could be some kind of energy-related zipcode. As far as the thermographics go, I wish we would sell them a lot offcourse, but in fact we often give them away to low-budget educational organizations like zoo's, school-websites and science-centers. It's to interesting though not to continue even it might be commercially waste of time. The relation between thermoregulation, energy-saving and health isseus is gigantic strong. Almost every product has something to do with this. A a sulution you could leave the main topic (loss of thermoregulating skills of humans and the enormous effect on energy-use and health), without the nutscode link. I just think the thermographics more or less prove the theory. This way the discussion would fit in the most logical forum. Greetings, Arno
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CK Member (Idle past 4153 days) Posts: 3221 Joined: |
quote: What if I took a polar bear and took it to the middle east - would it be "good-looking" then? Why not?
quote: I really don't understand what you are getting at - I don't understand what is different from a reptile regulating it's temperature via the use of the sun and rocks and Human's doing the same by the use of fibers and shade.
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Wounded King Member Posts: 4149 From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Joined: |
I have to say I'm with Charles. Humans just have a lot of cultural and behavioural strategies for thermoregulation, many of which are not particularly concerned with energy efficiency. Pretty much all of the solutions you suggest are similarly behavioural and not any sort of re-activation of possible ancestral answers to this problem.
The obvious 're-activation' solution would seem to be for everyone to grow a nice thick winter coat of hair/fur when the weather calls for it. Sadly I think that without some pretty radical advances in the field of genetic engineering this is still science fiction rather than a viable strategy. Even then it would only really be another technological solution. Humans will not genetically evolve a more efficient thermoregulatory strategy until there is a compelling survival advantage to doing so. I'd be interested to know if you have any comparative thermographs of populations that have historically lived towards the arctic? Do Inuits or Sami improved thermoregulation? If so is it genetic or culturally derived, i.e. by a diet high in fats provided insulation. TTFN, WK
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arno Inactive Member |
We made some thermographics of a polar bear and a brown beer at a cold winter day. The brown bear showed a cold nose, the polar beer a warm nose, besides that the fur looked pretty similar. Because of the thick very good insulating furs they won't cool down or heat up very fast, but they also have a problem losing internal heat after e.g. a long run (this can overheat and kill an polar beer). A white bear might even feel more comforable in the sun than a brown beer.
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arno Inactive Member |
The difference between a reptile using his skin and the sun and people using clothing and shoes is pretty big. If you are not wearing shoes and live outdoors a lot, you'll grow pretty thick "footsoles", your bloodvessels probably also develop normal. The result would be that you'll feel pretty comfortable within a relatively wide temperature range (comfortzone). You'll be able to walk on warm stones and even ice. On the other hand, the very small feet of those older chinese women (thanks to cultural shoe-strategies) will have a very different perception of comfort. There shoes prevented a normal development, which probable makes them feel very quick warm or cold.
I think the same go's more or less for clothing, children who are allways forced into warm clothing, because mummy is affraid they'll catch a cold won't create a big "comfortzone".
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arno Inactive Member |
Sorry, I didn't travel to the northpole yet with a camera, maybe in the future. You'll probably can find these differences closer to home. Monkeys grow a little extra fat towards the winter (the ones who live in mountaines), if it really gets cold they migrate to more comfortable places. Some people tend towards having fatreserves all year round, some people eat a little as possible, some work-out, some do bodybuilding, some shave there legs, some don't, some like a chilly house, some a sauna. You don't need to look for ancient people to find differences in thermoregulating skills. I think the biggest difference between "modern- " and e.g. "tribal- " people is the focus on the house. Modern people tend to regulate there complete surrounding area for 24 hours a day all year long. Animals don't, they use the surrounding area (sun or shade, high or low) and use all kinds of thermoregulating tools. There focus is on themselves. It would be much more energy-efficint if we changed our focus from buildings to clothing and thermoregulation. Tribal people probably have more thermoregulating skills that city-people.
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Larni Member Posts: 4000 From: Liverpool Joined: |
I too am not sure the point you are making. Humans evolved out of hot a climate: our thermo-regulation suite is set up to loose heat insofar as we sweat, walk up right (presenting less of a profile to high sun) and our head hair blocks most of that (those of us who still have it). Even our nose shows adaption for heat regulation.
Neanderthals on the other hand showed evidence of cold adaption: short compact bodies, short limbs, big massive conks and so on. They may have had sub dermal lipid layers similar to modern day Inuit people. Even these groups needed to wear clothing to protect themselves from the cold. Humans are not cold loving creatures (as shown by the 'untidy' heat sigs) only in the sense that they are not adapted for cold. Were it not for our ability to manipulate the environment we would be restricted (in all likleyhood) to tropical and sub tropical bands.
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arno Inactive Member |
Were it not for our ability to manipulate the environment we would be restricted (in all likleyhood) to tropical and sub tropical bands.
With as much as an iglo and the right clothing it's possible to survive almost everywhere on this planet. I'm not saying that we all should live like captain Caveman. But building houses as closed as a plastic bag keeping them at steady high temperatures and controled humidity all the time does seem a bit overreacted. I would like to see more open architecture and green like the Hundertwasser designs. It gives you the opportunity to look for a comfortable place intstead of beng treated like a commercial monoculture pig.
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CK Member (Idle past 4153 days) Posts: 3221 Joined: |
quote: Forgot it - no profits margins in that.
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Larni Member Posts: 4000 From: Liverpool Joined: |
arno writes: I would like to see more open architecture and green like the Hundertwasser designs. In a perfect world this would be a good thing (although his designs make me think on bad trips to be honest). As CK points out however, this is unlikely as some one has to find the money to knock up a place like Hunderwasser's designs. So, can I assume that your position is that if people were better at thermo-regulation we could build more aesthetically pleasing (to you) domiciles? This is not too outrageous, when it gets cold I put on a jumper rather than turn up the thermostat because it cost me money not to do so. I suppose I could use my mamalian trick of burning food to boost my temperature or running on the spot but this is a short term heat increase and as it will no doubt make me sweat I will suffer a net loss in heat when the activity is over. As I said above, we are adapted to loose heat, not retain it.
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arno Inactive Member |
I agree. If everyone would put on a sweater instead of turning up the heat, you'll probably save 50%. I'm glad I'm adapted to loosing heat. All this insulating fat everywhere makes it pretty difficult to lose heat though.
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Brad McFall Member (Idle past 5058 days) Posts: 3428 From: Ithaca,NY, USA Joined: |
There may indeed be *more* ancestral information involved.
While generalizing into a potential trichotomy the experimental apparatus Faraday used to demonstrate thermoelectricity contra Voltaists,
I uncovered a 2004 article which indicates that gel rather than bimetallic combinations could be organically responsive under thermal contact for electric flows. If the PDF doesnt work use GOOGLE. I got it with organic thermoelectricity
quote:Thermoelectricity in Natural and Synthetic Hydrogels Understanding genetic bases for shark thermoelectricity in the developing field of evo-devo probably will have some conservation towards human issues. Edited by Brad McFall, : fixing link blind
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