Body Temperature and PULSE!

“Since living cells are the fundamental units of all life, the basic science underlying human health and disease is the science explaining how living cells function. This basic science is cell physiology.”  
Dr. Gilbert Ling

Body temperature AND resting pulse readings are direct insight into your cellular energy production – your most fundamental human NEED. When your body is producing energy using the food you eat, all systems are communicating and able to function at their optimal level. When your body is unable to produce energy because you are skipping meals, over eating processed foods, over/under exercising, not sleeping, etc, all systems are compromised and the body is fighting for survival. In this state your body will prioritize its utilization of energy sources to ensure the emergency is dealt with.

Taking body temperature and pulse allow you to:

• To assess hormonal influences of metabolism
• To identify subclinical hypothyroidism
• To identify adrenal and blood sugar influences on metabolism
• To assess adrenaline, cortisol, estrogen, serotonin, CO2, T3, progesterone, etc role in relation to the adrenals, liver and thyroid

Best times to take temperature and pulse:

• Upon wakening in bed and lying down, prior to sitting up. If the night time stress is very high, the adrenalin will still be high until breakfast, increasing both temperature and pulse rate.
• 20 min after each meal and snack. After eating breakfast, the cortisol (and adrenalin, if it stayed high despite the increased cortisol) will start returning to a more normal, lower level, as the blood sugar is sustained by food, instead of by the stress hormones. Normally, both temperature and pulse rate rise after breakfast, but in hypothyroid people either, or both, might fall.
• Prior to going to bed

Other ways to determine if you are in a hypo-metabolic state:

• Placing your hands on your bare skin below your shirt. If they are cold after a meal, your temperature is typically low
• Cold hands and feet indicate increased adrenaline, low pulse and low body temperature
• Cold nose may indicate low stored glycogen in the liver

Ray Peat PhD: But hypoglycemia also tends to decrease the conversion of T4 to T3, so heat production often decreases when a person is hungry. First, their fingers, toes, and nose will get cold, because adrenalin, or adrenergic sympathetic nervous activity, will increase to keep the brain and heart at a normal temperature, by reducing circulation to the skin and extremities. Despite the temperature-regulating effect of adrenalin, the reduced heat production resulting from decreased T3 will make a person susceptible to hypothermia if the environment is cool.

Assessing body temperature for thyroid:

• Baseline temps as low as 96°(F), indicate low thyroid function
• When managed with the proper nutrition and supplement support, temperatures will begin to rise
• Excess production of stress hormones will cause a drop in temperature. Adrenaline and cortisol, as well as estrogen, block thyroid hormone production

Assessing body temperature for adrenal function:

• Baseline temperatures present unstable patterns
• Temperatures are below 98.6°,  but can fluctuate day to day down to 96°
• Temperatures typically rise in warm weather and drop in cold weather

The bottom line is this, taking body temperature without pulse will not allow you to see if adrenaline and/or cortisol are driving your temperature. If you wake up with a 98.4 for example, but don’t take your pulse, which could be 100bpm, then you would not know that your “normal” temperature is actually being driven by adrenaline. Then when you eat, what normally will happen as nutrients are now coming in and will down regulate adrenaline, your body temperature will go down to its baseline, as adrenaline is no longer driving it…thus making you think as well that your breakfast did not work for you. So you can see how from one example how just taking body temperature alone can be misleading. What we have found through our experience is that:

• Pulse takes longer to regulate than body temperature
• Pulse will help provide you insite into adrenaline
• Acute phases of adrenaline will show up with low pulses, with maybe 1-2 higher ones during the day
• More chronic cases, people will show up with low body temperature and low pulse
• More systemic/chronic metabolisms that are beginning to shut down and that have not been regulated for a long time will show with either high body temperatures and/or low temperatures, but their pulse readings will be high from the time they get up and throughout the day

Josh and Jeanne Rubin

This is not another “DIE-t” but a guide (FREE download) in helping you define exactly what you need to support yourself nutritionally, increase energy and live the life you desire!