Under temperature? Stay cool!

To talk about hypothermia, you first have to define what a normal body temperature is. There are actually quite different opinions on this, but on the whole you can say that anything between 36.3 and 37.6 degrees is normal.

And now you can read on the internet that children who are seriously ill with blood poisoning, septicaemia, meningitis or something like that can also have a low temperature. This is also true - but: If a child has such an illness, there are umpteen other symptoms that are noticeable long before a low body temperature. The children look scarily bad, they vomit, are not in a good mood, lethargic, apathetic, etc. In any case, the temperature is not the decisive factor.

And it's not the other way round. If your child is reasonably well and you measure 35.9 or 35.8 degrees in the bum - then this is actually completely meaningless and has no medical significance whatsoever.

For the sake of completeness, there are two more things to say on the subject:

Babies are sometimes not yet able to regulate their body temperature so well and can slip below 36 degrees. However, this actually only means that you have to wrap them up a little warmer so that their body temperature regulates itself better again.

And it is also clear that the body temperature can drop to a life-threatening level if you get into certain dangerous situations, for example if you are lightly dressed and drunk in a ditch in winter, then this can of course become life-threatening and fatal. Fortunately, this doesn't play a role in the day-to-day running of paediatric practices.

Conclusion: A slightly lower body temperature is not really significant if the child is reasonably well.