Welcome to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. In this program, we want to encourage you in your Christian faith by showing how scientific evidence supports the Bible, particularly the Genesis account. The book of Genesis lays the foundation for all matters addressed in the rest of the Bible. The nature of God, His sovereignty in creation, man's purpose, sin, marriage, family, and why we need a Savior are all introduced and explained in Genesis. When we see that the first and most foundational book of the Bible can be trusted in all matters, including science, it builds confidence in the rest of the inspired word all the way to Revelation.
On today's show, we'll get to hear from Dr. Randy Galusa, medical doctor and national representative with the Institute for Creation Research. Here's Dr. Galuza. At the time of this recording, we are anticipating the 2018 Winter Olympics.
All of us enjoy watching those world-class athletes out there in the snow skiing and snowboarding and we love to watch those ice skaters come in. We see people doing the biathlon, long-distance skiing. It's amazing how they can be out in those frigid temperatures sometimes and yet when they get done with their event, they are really pouring out a lot of sweat. How in the world is your body able to compensate and balance? the heat that is being produced from all of that rigorous and vigorous activity, also at the same time being in such frigid cold conditions.
Well, the same engineering principles that explain how man-made things work can actually be used to explain how God made things work, and we are one of those God-made things. For engineers, a major achievement of design is to build precise controls and precise mechanisms for very active processes. And in order for those to work, we need some really exquisite sensors, and we need some great. Processors of all of that data in order to achieve very, very tight tolerances.
Well your body is able to maintain very, very tight tolerances in terms of its body temperature. In fact, regulating the body temperature is absolutely essential for life.
So, if you are one of those world-class athletes out there, the organs. that are in your skull and in your chest and your abdomen are really the most temperature sensitive.
So you need to protect them from extremes of Cold and the extremes of heat. And very, very precise biochemical processes manage this. That's because other biochemical processes, particularly those that are controlled by the enzymes in your body, are very, very temperature sensitive. In fact, they function best when your core body temperature is somewhere between 96 and 101 degrees. for most people, our set point the temperature that our body is normally at is about ninety eight point six, and that set point is regulated by a portion of your brain called the hypothalamus.
and it is able to exquisitely manage your body temperature well within very tight ranges. In fact, if your body goes about ten degrees above that core temperature, it really poses a risk of being lethal for you. and for every one to two degrees increase in your core temperature, the efficiency of those biochemical processes goes down by about ten per cent. Small children will risk going into seizures if their core temperature goes above a hundred and six degrees, and for most of us we would be dead if our temperature went to one hundred and nine degrees.
So it is very important that we keep that temperature down. But on the other hand, we don't want to get too cold because if you get down around 87 degrees, the biochemical processes controlling your heart begin to become deranged themselves and you could go into cardiac arrest.
So you really need to manage all of that heat that your body is producing. In fact, even if you are doing no strenuous activity at all, just the daily energy needs to just keep you alive could raise the temperature of twenty pounds of water about two degrees Fahrenheit for every hour. That's just to stay alive.
Now when you add any kinds of vigorous physical activities, it can go up by over twice as much, and world-class athletes can drive it up even higher.
So body temperature can either be friend or foe depending on how it is managed. As I mentioned, the hypothalamus manages that body temperature, but it's not just the hypothalamus by itself. Really, the whole brain is being utilized to help measure your body temperature and manage that as well. There is a portion of your brain of that hypothalamus which is the heat-losing center, and there is one which is called the heat-promoting center, and it helps control all of those things. And it actually is able to keep your core temperature under normal conditions within about four-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit, no matter what your body condition is and what your strenuous activity is at the same time.
And the programming for this Is not just such that it reacts instantaneously to body temperature, but is actually taking data in from sensors in your skin, sensors in the mucous membranes of your nose and your mouth, and even part of your eyes, and even sensors in the muscles themselves. And it integrates this data together so it is actually able to anticipate. what your core temperature will be based on your activities at the moment, so that you are never really falling behind and needing to catch up in order to rapidly cool down or rapidly warm up. And right after our break, we'll take it up from where your brain is going to anticipate what you need to do to the actual changes in your body, which are going to take place in order to maintain that core temperature. And we can look forward to talking about that in just a few moments.
When we return, we'll hear some final words from Dr. Glusa. Stay with us. From sharks to butterflies, bats to orangutans, we can't help but marvel at the stunning and amusing creatures God has made. If you and your kids enjoy learning about animals, then you'll love our book, Guide to Animals, with its beautiful full-color images and fascinating facts.
Published by the Institute for Creation Research, Guide to Animals provides answers to many popular questions about the animal kingdom. How do chameleons change colors? How do jellyfish live without a brain? And what happened to the dinosaurs and other extinct animals? Guide to Animals shows how everything that can slither, crawl, soar, or swim displays the handiwork of God.
Order your copy of Guide to Animals from the Institute for Creation Research by calling 800-628-7640 or visiting icr.org. That's 800-628-7640 or visiting icr.org. Welcome back to Science, Scripture, and Salvation. Here's Dr. Calooza.
Right before the break, we were talking about how these world-class athletes that we'll see in the Winter Olympics. Are able to maintain their body temperature while they're out in some very cold, frigid conditions, but at the same time exercising in such a way that they are. producing massive amounts of heat. In fact, this would be a challenge even for a human engineer to build a machine that could exquisitely manage the body temperature. under such circumstances.
So now we're picking up with one of those athletes who's in the process of maybe skiing a long, long distance and exerting a lot of energy.
So even though it's cold outside, they are producing a lot of heat. And your body's going to offload that heat in several ways. First of all, It's going to use your skin as a massive radiator of all of that additional heat. We all know that our skin is full of tiny, tiny little vessels.
So tiny that you actually cannot even see them except with a microscope, but they actually are not just bringing nutrients to your body, but they can act as a tiny little radiator. The vessels are lined with a muscular tissue. And when the set point of your brain is changed, Then the heat-losing center will send a signal to cause those muscles surrounding those vessels to relax. In other words, they dilate open, and you're able to produce and send a lot more blood to those vessels on your skin. And this acts like a giant radiator in order to start to offload a lot of the heat.
In addition to that, your lungs are able to exchange a lot of moisture. And your skin is able to offload a lot of moisture, and this is also going to cool the body as it leads to another mechanism of cooling called evaporation.
So, when we really need a lot of transferring of the heat from our body, we will activate sweat glands. The heat-losing center not only dilates the vessels, but it activates tiny little glands, which we all know, to begin to release a massive amount of water, but not in major droplets, in very, very tiny droplets, which can be easily evaporated.
Now the genius of this mechanism is that it is actually able to remove through this evaporation Ten times more heat than if you were just sprayed with water and it ran off your body in the form of very, very large drops.
So when you are heat stressed, The heat-losing center is able to dilate the vessels as a major radiator. You produce sweat. And sometimes you can produce sweat under strong strenuous activity of over two quarts per hour, which can be evaporated from the skin. And this is a very effective way of keeping you cool. In fact, that is probably one of the major critical needs of your body at any time, is being able to manage the heat just from your basic needs of light.
and in any types of strenuous exercise. But what if? one of those world class athletes had to stay laying in the snow for a long time. Maybe they are participating in one of those events where they lay in the snow and they shoot at a target. How would you maintain your body temperature under extreme cold conditions?
Well, that's where the heat promoting center kicks in, and it begins to send signals to your body in order for it to produce more heat. In fact, it will cause the production of a hormone which we normally call adrenaline to be released. When this is released, the cellular burning activities in your body begin to increase. We all know that our body is constantly burning sugars and glucose and when that is released, the burning rate increases and it produces more heat. In addition to that, thyroid hormone from your thyroid gland is released and it begins to stimulate and increase your overall metabolism.
and if we're really, really chilled, The heat-producing center sends signals to tiny little muscles all over our body in our skin, causing them to rapidly contract and release in a very, very high rate of motion, which we would call shivering. And this produces a tremendous amount of heat for your body. In addition to that, all of those vessels in your skin close down and it shunts the body back to your core, increasing your metabolism, beginning the shivering, and producing heat that is kept in the core of your body. You're able to maintain this body temperature. What a marvel.
What an incredible design that we see in the exquisite control of this We can only adore the Lord Jesus Christ who is able to put all of this together, not just for us, but for all of these athletes that we're able to enjoy. Thank you for joining us on Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. That's all the time we have for our program today, but we would love to connect with you through our website at icr.org. For over 45 years, ICR has equipped believers with evidence of the Bible's accuracy and authority by showing how science supports the Genesis creation account. Our scientists research the evidence for creation and communicate their findings through books, articles, DVD series, and conferences.
Please visit our website at icr.org for more information about the latest scientific discoveries, to subscribe to our free magazine and devotional, and to locate our next creation conference at a venue near you. All of this and more at icr.org. If you've enjoyed this podcast, subscribe to Science, Scripture, and Salvation on iTunes. Also, do us a favor and rate and review the show so that more listeners can find us. Thanks for listening and God bless.
