In my country is more like: Normally you should be 36.x; 37 would be a little bit high but not yet fever.

I personally think it really isn't that important though, because how people measure it is way more imprecise/fluctuant than the standard itself.

We (Australia) have always in my experience taught and been taught a range.

eg:

> You probably have a fever if your temperature is 38°C or higher.

> A normal temperature is around 36-37°C, although it depends on your age, what you’ve been doing, the time of day and how you take the measurement.

( further notes on taking temp., children, etc. )

https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/fever

Yes, it's a conversion of 37C which is stupid since 37C is when I have a fever already

37 may or may not be a fever depending on your activity. If you went running your body temperature will be above 37 but you'll feel perfectly normal. When you got 37 and it's a fever it feels different.

Knowing that my resting body temp was permanently 36.8-36.9 while everyone elses (on the same thermometer) was 36.6 was one of the things that led me realise something was wrong and in fact it turned out I had an autoimmune. Of course the temperature fluctuates with activity and with the time of the day but an auxiliary reading of 36.6 has been what I've always observed for myself and others. After all we all run the same biochemical processes that are optimal at this temp.

As a side note, I hate digital contact thermometers with passion. Mercury is dangerous as hell but if it wasn't for gallium alloy ones I'd smuggle them in the country.

>Mercury is dangerous as hell but if it wasn't for gallium alloy ones I'd smuggle them in the country.

It's elemental mercury encapsulated in glass not one of the organic compounds that cause all the acute and longterm health issues. Chlorine bleach is scarier stuff used in the household.

The thing about mercury is that it accumulates, but chlorine does not.

Mercury is mostly banned for being persistent pollutant, next after lead. There is no real safe level of mercury intake due to cumulative damage and hard for body to get rid of.

There is a safe, heck, required level of chlorine intake. (What is table salt?)

Mercury is not any superior at measuring temperature over a resistive electronic or a bimetallic thermometer, or alcohol capillary one. (Except the latter boils and freezes too easily, not a problem for body temperature.)

Although in theory electronic thermometers can be just as accurate in practice I've found that across brands the measurements fluctuate to an unacceptable degree.

What should we know about bleach?

For one, not to mix it with vinegar. Chlorine gas.

There was a spate of TikTok's recommending mixing them for cleaning purposes. To the horror of many.

Drink elemental mercury and you'll be fine, it'll just pass through and you'll shit it out.

Drink bleach and it'll probably kill you or at least give you terrible injuries.

Ok, guess I should have asked, what should we know about bleach besides the warnings prominently printed on the bottle. Tbf I really don't expect everything in my house to be edible.

My thermometer is a cook's infrared no-contact instant-read thermometer (I also own a digital under-tongue thermometer, but I no longer use it). The cook's thermometer is more accurate.

Obviously, I'm talking about waking temperature, if I wake up at 37C I have a fever since my normal is 36.5-36.6

50 years ago, I was taught 36.6C is normal. The thermometers we used, back then, had a mark at 36.6C.

Brit here; I was taught that 98.4F is "normal". Clearly I'm abnormal; my own temp is nearly always higher.

We've been using 98.6F as the threshold for fever in India for as long as I can remember (I'm 40 years old) even though for everything else we use the Celsius scale.

As an American, I can’t say if it is American only. I can say 98.6°F is the commonly accepted healthy body temp.

I have noticed over the last decade, nurses checking my temp are more likely to say something like “You are 97.6°F. That’s normal.”