Most Recent Posts

What's your temperature?

That's the question of the hour. The Ebola virus has made taking your temperature part of everyday conversation. People in West Africa are doing it. People returning from the region are doing it. And so are the overly paranoid in the United States.

For anyone who's been exposed to the virus, a body temperatures of 100.4 or higher has been deemed the point of concern. The goal, of course, is that magic number: 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Except 98.6 degrees isn't so magical after all. In fact, that might not be your normal temperature.

For insights into the range of temperatures we can experience, we consulted with Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior associate at the Center for Health Security at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and Dr. Benjamin Levine, a professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center who knows a thing or two about fever (his specialty is exercise science).

For Ebola, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature for which medical attention is necessary.

When Ebola is not a factor, Levine defines 101.5 degrees Fahrenheit as a serious fever. (Although he notes that you could register a lower temperature and still be harboring an infection.)

These high temperatures can actually save your life. If you have an infection or virus, your body's response is to raise your internal temperature to kill it off. In other words, fever is your body's defense against whatever is making you feel sick. So before you take fever reducers like Tylenol or aspirin, you may want to consider letting your body do its job, says Levine.

"Lowering the temperature with Tylenol doesn't help you fight infection," he says. "It just masks it. But if the patient is shivering, shaking, sweating, you may want to lower [the temperature] for comfort reasons."

Baseline normal temperatures differ from person to person and from day to day. But if you're worried about what your thermometer is telling you, here are some points of interest, from the low to the very, very high.

56.7 degrees: Anna Bagenholm, a Swedish medical student, spent 80 minutes under ice after a skiing accident in Norway in 1999. When she was rescued, her body temperature was 56.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Although she was clinically dead, resuscitation efforts were successful and she now has only minor nerve damage. (Do not try this at home).

95 degrees: Initial signs of hypothermia set in, such as shivering, dizziness, confusion and increased heart rate, says Adalja.

98.6 degrees: This is the generally accepted "normal" temperature, though different people can have different "normals" and even the same person's temperature can vary throughout the day and still be considered normal. Temperature is lower in the morning, since you're less active, and women tend to have slightly (less than half a degree) higher baseline temperatures than men. A 1992 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association measured the temperature of 148 adults four times a day for three consecutive days. The mean was 98.2 degrees.

97-99 degrees: This is what most doctors would describe as the normal temperature range, according to Levine.

100.4 degrees: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified 100.4 as the benchmark for concern about Ebola. Depending on an individual's normal baseline and Ebola-related symptoms, a triple-digit temperature in the context of Ebola is cause for concern.

101.5 degrees: Anything at or above this level is classified as a serious fever, says Levine: "Lower doesn't mean you don't have an infection, but that's when you've crossed a threshold of concern."

107 degrees: Multiple organ failure can occur, and the high temperature itself might bring on seizures. But Adalja says hospitals in the U.S. wouldn't let it get to this point: you'd be treated with fever reducers and cooling blankets.

115 degrees: On July 10, 1980, 52-year-old Willie Jones of Atlanta was admitted to the hospital with heatstroke and a temperature of 115 degrees Fahrenheit. He spent 24 days in the hospital and survived. Jones holds the Guinness Book of World Records honor for highest recorded body temperature.

fever

temperature

medicine

Global Health

The United States has transferred five detainees being held at its prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Georgia and Slovakia.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, four of the men are Yemeni, and that is important because they are the first Yemeni prisoners to be transferred since 2010. The newspaper explains:

"The U.S. banned transfers of Yemeni detainees to Yemen after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab , a Nigerian man, attempted to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day 2009 with an underwear bomb made by a Yemen-based terror group.

"Yemeni detainees are the largest group in Guantanamo, and transferring those detainees from the prison remains an obstacle to closing it, according to human rights advocates.

"There now are 143 men held at Guantanamo, including 84 Yemen nationals, according to the Pentagon. Of the Yemenis held at the prison, 54 are eligible to be transferred from Guantanamo and have been cleared for release, the Pentagon said."

If you remember, President Obama has repeatedly vowed to close the Guantanamo prison, but congressional Republicans have opposed those attempts.

Despite that, as The Associated Press explains, Congress eased restrictions on transferring detainees to countries willing to keep an eye on them.

The AP adds:

"A number of resettlements are expected in the coming weeks. U.S. State Department envoy Clifford Sloan has been trying to persuade countries to accept prisoners, and he praised Georgia and Slovakia.

" 'We are very grateful to our partners for these generous humanitarian gestures,' Sloan said. 'We appreciate the strong support we are receiving from our friends and allies around the globe.'

"Georgia took three prisoners from Guantanamo in 2010. Slovakia has taken a total of eight men from Guantanamo."

Yemen

Guantanamo Bay

Martial law in Thailand will remain in place "indefinitely," the country's justice minister told Reuters in an interview nearly six months after the military overthrew the government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

"Martial law is necessary and we cannot lift it because the government and junta need it as the army's tool," Justice Minister Gen. Paiboon Koomchaya told the news agency. "We are not saying that martial law will stay in place for 50 years, no this is not it, we just ask that it remain in place for now, indefinitely."

Thai Prime Minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha had originally promised to restore democracy by next year, but as we reported last month, he said the date could be pushed back.

The justice minister's comments come just ahead of tourist season, which accounts for nearly 10 percent of Thailand's gross domestic product. Tourism took a hit following the May 22 putsch that brought Prayuth to power. But as NPR reported last month, the head of the Tourism Authority of Thailand said martial law is good for tourism because it ensures the safety of foreign tourists.

Thailand

The United States has seen many fundraisers headlined by an Obama in recent years, but this week it won't be the president or the first lady — it will be his step-grandmother, Sarah Obama, who is raising funds to build a school and hospital in her hometown, Kogelo, Kenya.

Obama, who runs the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation and was honored with an Education Pioneer award at the United Nations on Wednesday as part of its Women's Entrepreneurship Day, has spent much of her life helping young people — and particularly young women — in her region get an education.

President Obama's last surviving grandparent, whom he referred to as Granny in his memoir Dreams of My Father, never went to school herself, she tells NPR's Scott Simon through an interpreter.

"It was very hard for women to get an education," when she was growing up, the 94-year-old Obama says. "Only young boys or men were allowed to go to school."

But things are different in Kenya now, she says. United Nations data actually shows a higher percentage of Kenyan girls going to school than Kenyan boys.

"I encourage them — even the ones who have had families at a young age — I encourage them to go to school so that the cycle of poverty can end," Obama says. She sometimes uses her grandson as an example of the doors an education can open.

Often, Obama says, she and her foundation provide much more than encouragement.

"I help the orphans and widows, especially the young girls who have been orphaned by their parents dying of HIV," she says. "I am their sole parent right now, so I help them pay school fees and also get them the things that they need, like sanitary towels, books, necessities like a pencil, school uniforms. That's what I do."

It's an investment that Sarah Obama says she gets an unbeatable return on.

"There's so many kids that I've helped educate, some of them at Nairobi University, Moi University and also Bondo University," she says. "These are orphans who I've helped pay for their school fares, and now it's my joy to see them in the universities about to graduate. There's a lot of success stories, and it just makes me happy and it keeps me going."

Kenya

President Obama