No, your body's cells are not "turning into mini furnaces" that are incinerating the bad guys LOL - As has been the common misperception for the last 30 years. Let's dive into it.
Imagine your body as a car engine. When the engine runs, it produces heat, and to prevent overheating, it uses a cooling system—radiator fluid circulates to absorb excess heat and releases it through the radiator. Similarly, your body produces heat through metabolism and physical activity. To keep your internal temperature steady, it relies on its own cooling system: sweating.
Here's how it works
Sweat Production: When you're hot, your sweat glands produce sweat, which is mostly water. This sweat moves to the surface of your skin.
Evaporation: The sweat doesn't just sit there—it evaporates. Evaporation requires energy in the form of heat, which it takes from your skin, effectively cooling you down.
Now, enter dehydration:
Less Water, Less Sweat: When you're dehydrated, your body has less water to spare for sweating. Think of it as running low on radiator fluid in that car engine—the cooling system can't function properly without enough fluid.
Reduced Cooling Efficiency: With less sweat available to evaporate, your body can't release heat as effectively. This means more heat stays trapped inside, and your internal temperature starts to rise.
Blood Flow Changes: Dehydration also reduces your blood volume. Blood helps transfer heat from your core to your skin, where it can be released. Less blood means this heat transfer slows down, keeping more heat inside.
Why You Feel Hotter
Heat Build-Up: Since your body can't cool itself efficiently through sweating and blood flow, heat starts to build up. This internal heat makes you feel hotter overall.
Perception of Heat: Additionally, the receptors in your skin that sense temperature can be affected by dehydration, making you more sensitive to heat.
Prioritizing Vital Organs: Your body is smart. In dehydration, it prioritizes sending the limited blood volume to vital organs like your heart and brain. This means less blood flows to the skin, reducing heat loss even further.
It's like trying to cool down your house on a scorching day without enough electricity to power the air conditioner fully. The A/C sputters, runs less efficiently, and the house stays uncomfortably warm.
Staying hydrated is crucial because water is the lifeblood of your body's cooling system. Without enough of it, your body can't sweat effectively or circulate blood optimally to dissipate heat. So, when you're dehydrated, you quite literally trap the heat inside, making you feel hotter. During dry fasting, this effect is felt quite intensely. Sometimes I hear some people don't get the dry fasting heat and the reasons are varied. Usually, I assume you have over-fasted, your metabolism is too low, heat receptors are malfunctioning, or have complications that are making your body hold onto water.
