A health check through facial temperature

Today, Géraldine Zamansky talks to us about the temperature of different parts of the face to diagnose certain diseases.

Géraldine Zamansky, a journalist for the health magazine on France 5, discusses a Chinese study which reveals that the heat of our face could reflect much more than a feverish state.

franceinfo: Chinese researchers believe they will one day be able to diagnose diabetes, for example, by simply taking the “facial temperature”?

Geraldine Zamansky: Yes, their hope is to detect diseases very early, by taking more precise THE temperatures of our face. That is, in different places, with a thermal camera.

Thanks to measurements taken with more than 2,800 people aged 20 to 90, they first identified the evolution linked to aging. In short, the face becomes colder, especially at the nose. Then, they found that some participants had a thermal age higher than their real age. Main causes: lack of sleep and poor health.

A closer look at the results then made it possible to establish “typical portraits” of several diseases, as Jin Dong Jackie Han, a researcher at the University of Peking, at the heart of this enormous study, explained to me.

So what would be the thermal characteristics of diabetes for example?

Diabetes results in a higher temperature, at the level of the upper part of the eyes. While it is the cheeks that heat up, in the case of hypertension for example. What I will summarize very quickly corresponds in fact to complex calculations, carried out with the help of artificial intelligence. And Jin Dong Jackie Han, told me that the relevance of this “diagnosis” reaches 80%.

The team’s hypothesis is that the thinness of facial skin, combined with the presence of numerous blood vessels – especially around the eyes – creates a kind of window on what is happening inside the body. And this is particularly exciting for Chinese doctors, whose traditional knowledge places great emphasis on examining the face.

Would this be great news for those who hate blood tests?

Yes, but more work is needed before we can hope to make these thermal diagnoses routinely. So in the meantime, the blood test was still part of the study. It confirmed, in the case of pathologies, the presence of inflammation or other disorders, which can be reflected – to put it very simply – in body temperature.

And finally, the researchers wanted to assess the effect of physical activity. They asked 23 participants to do 800 jump ropes per day for two weeks. Result: minus five years of thermal age! So taking advantage of the summer to move a little more, without forgetting to sleep better, could allow you to “rejuvenate…

The study