A study of temperature regulation in New Guinea people

Abstract

Body-temperature regulation has been studied in two communities in New Guinea. On Karkar Island in the hotter coastal region, 40 young adult males and the same number of young female villagers, together with 39 plantation workers and 14 Europeans, were examined. At Lufa, near Goroka, in the cooler and drier highlands, 30 male and 25 female adult villagers, together with 36 older people, were investigated. Tem perature regulation was studied using an air-conditioned bed in which the subjects received standardized exposures to cool and warm environments and the sweating response was measured during controlled hyperthermia at 38 °C. The results did not reveal any important difference in response between the coastal villagers and the highland people. The Europeans living on Karkar Island had the high sweating capacity which is characteristic of the acclimatized European, whereas the sweat rates of the New Guinea people were closely comparable to the level for an unacclimatized European. Comparison of the two sexes showed the lower sweat rates and the pattern of deep body and skin temperature changes found in women in previous studies using this technique. The changes in deep body temperature, skin temperature, blood flow and heart rate during the successive periods of exposure to a thermally neutral climate, with cooling and during rewarming, do not indicate that the indigenes of New Guinea utilize the vasomotor control mechanism more efficiently than Europeans.