As temperatures continue to rise across the world and Europe, what’s the limit your body can take?

As Europe reported the hottest June globally on record last month - and higher temperatures still are expected for the rest of the summer - experts have found just how hot is too hot for our bodies to handle.

According to a recent study published by researchers at the University of Roehampton in London, the human body has an “upper critical temperature” which it can tolerate safely of between 40 and 50 degrees Celsius. After reaching this temperature, our body experiences “heat stress,” a condition which causes confusion, nausea, dizziness, headache and fainting.

The results of the study offer crucial information to protect ourselves at a time when our planet, and especially the European continent, is experiencing unprecedented temperatures.

“Temperatures in Europe have increased by about two degrees relative to pre-industrial conditions over the last few decades, and that’s somewhere around double what the global average is,” Matthew Patterson, a postdoctoral research assistant in climate physics at the University of Oxford, told Euronews Next.

“Europe is really a hot spot for climate change and increases in heat extremes. We’ve seen increases in both the frequency and intensity of heat extremes, and we’re seeing more and more record-breaking temperatures each year as a result of that warming trend. And that’s going to continue into the future as we continue to emit greenhouse gases.”

Professor Lewis Halsey, researcher at the School of Life and Health Sciences Centre at the University of Roehampton in London, and his colleagues didn’t have to endanger anyone’s safety to determine our body’s limits.

“What we were recording was an increase in metabolic rate,” Halsey said of the experiment conducted in 2021 on four men and