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Notes -
Interesting.
My husband tended to be 99 F when he was younger, and also attracted way more static electricity than I do. He eats things like an entire pound of bacon, then just paces a lot, or walks around barefoot in the snow or something. My daughter seems to have inherited his metabolism, and actually was sent home from pre-K a couple of times for "low grade fever," but then she got home and didn't have a fever.
My body temperature is a bit below average (I don't check it very often, because I almost never run a fever), and I'm lower energy, but also have fewer random health problems -- things like almost never getting headaches or nausea, even when we eat something a bit off, getting over colds and flus faster, stuff like that. This has been good for pregnancy, which went smoothly all three times.
There seem to be trade offs involved.
There is a "woo" explanation that goes something like this:
In all plants and animals, there is a thrive/survive dynamic. During times of plenty, the plant will blossom, the animal will expend energy and look to breed. During times of starvation, the plant will go dormant, the animal will hibernate.
But the candle that burns brighter (high metabolism) is extinguished sooner. High metabolism may lead to better health, more energy, and visible abs, but it will also age one more quickly.
This is a universal principle of all life forms.
It's maybe directionally accurate. It's certainly not very well-studied. Maybe I'm just hoping there's an upside to my vampire like pulse rate and body temperature.
When I was younger, my normal body temperature was around 99.7. I ate a terrifying amount of food, yet even without any regular exercise other than walking, I had a BMI that was barely above underweight. I thrived in cold weather, my blood pressure was on the verge of being too low, and my resting heart rate was in the 50s. I’m also fairly tall, and, interestingly, also used to generate a lot more static electricity than most other people I knew (@Gaashk, are you aware of any connection between body temperature/metabolism and static electricity?).
Unfortunately for me, it seems there may be something to your theory. Not only do mice studies present me with a bleak picture of my future, but when I compare myself to my former classmates, I seem to be wrinkling much more rapidly than any of them, even though I generally have a vampiric aversion to the sun, while they spend much more time in it.
Perhaps I should just take this as a hint from the universe to stop procrastinating and do something more with my life before my time is up.
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