The specific heat of the human body is lower than previously believed: The Journal Temperature toolbox

Abstract

ABSTRACT The specific heat capacity of the human body is an important value for heat balance analysis in thermoregulation and metabolism research. The widely used value of 3.47 kJ · kg−1· °C−1 was originally based on assumptions and was not measured or calculated. The purpose of this paper is to calculate the specific heat of the body, defined as the mass-weighted mean of the tissue specific heat. The masses of 24 body tissue types were derived from high-resolution magnetic resonance images of four virtual human models. The specific heat values of each tissue type were obtained from the published tissue thermal property databases. The specific heat of the entire body was calculated to be approximately 2.98 kJ · kg−1 · °C−1 and ranged from 2.44 to 3.39 kJ · kg−1 · °C−1 depending on whether min or max measured tissue values were used for the calculation. To our knowledge, this is the first time specific heat of the body has been calculated from the measured values of individual tissues. The contribution of the muscle to the specific heat of the body is approximately 47%, and the contribution of the fat and skin is approximately 24%. We believe this new information will improve the accuracy of calculations related to human heat balance in future studies of exercise, thermal stress, and related areas.