TIL: What Would Happen If You Just Stayed In Bed Forever!?
You've probably all dreamed about it - spending the whole day in bed.
It's just too tempting to spend the day cuddled up in a blanket, binge-watching your favorite TV show and eating Pizza Delivery - especially when it's starting to get cold outside.
With everything is getting more and more electronic, people need to use their bodies less and less -
You can now order food or get something that you only have to "cook" in the microwave, you can deliver groceries to your house and thanks to skype, you don't even have to leave your apartment to talk to someone or have a meeting.
People are getting more and more lazy - no doubt about that.
But what would happen to your body if you actually never left the bed?
Some have experienced this due to an illness, and it's not as fun as it sounds!
The most obvious effect that you have probably guessed already, is that your muscle strength would dramatically decrease.
When you are at complete rest and don't use your muscles at all, they would lose up to 15% of their strength each week.
So after only 3-5 weeks of bed rest, your muscles would have lost about HALF of their original strength!
Total bed rest is also very bad for your stamina.
No matter how fit or un-fit you were before, it can always get worse.
Your endurance would be so low that even small physical activities like walking up the stairs or a few seconds of sprinting could lead to major fatigue - which in turn results to even more inactivity.
Your bones and muscles would actually decrease in mass too.
Especially your thigh muscles would actually lose 3% of their mass within only one week!
And your bone density can be reduced to 50% of its original mass within 3 months.
This is caused by a process called Bone Resorption, which breaks down the bone, and that will eventually become faster than the speed of new bone growth if you keep being inactive.
Also, your skin would suffer from the constant pressure.
This is called a "Bedsore" or "Pressure Sore". It often happens to bony areas that are covered with skin but not a lot of tissue, for example your tailbone or shoulder blades.
Usually, people who have a conditions that limits their ability to stand up or change the lying position develop bedsores.
It means that the blood flow to your skin and tissue is being decreased by the constant pressure of your own body weight.
This results in skin injuries, and ultimately the cells can die from the lack of nutrients they'd usually receive from the blood.
Your cardiovascular system also changes with constant bed rest - maybe the most dangerous symptoms of them all.
Your resting heart rate increases 4-15 beats within the first few weeks (then, it stays stagnant on that level.)
And the blood volume decreases dramatically: Within 24 hours you lose 5% of it, within 6 days 10%, and within 14 days you will have lost 20% of your body's blood volume.
Less blood volume also means that there is less oxygen to be transported to your cells - resulting in even more fatigue.
As you can see, lots of these symptoms lead to a vicious cycle.
And all of this is of course apart from the mental effects - isolation, loneliness, depression, anxiety, lack of motivation and helplessness.
As you can see, our body needs a certain amount of physical exercise despite modern technology making us more lazy - otherwise our abilities and health will decrease dramatically.
Images: 1, 2, 3, Logo by @profitgenerator, Sources: 1, 2
- Instagram -
© Sirwinchester
deep-fried food and staying in bed forever... you are definitely my TIL God! :-D thanks for sharing, upvoted certainly.
Hahaha! Thank you, I just try to pick up questions that people might wonder about!
..... and you do in an excellent way!
This is what everyone will look like in the near future after staying in bed all stay, popping in on Steemit 4 times a day - and eatting pizza. I'm the first example - I find my muscles have atrofeeded but my brain Steem Power just keeps rising which allows me to operate my ships with much more ease. I am now beginning to have the ability of having telepathic communications with other Steemians, too which is great since it's become too hard to lift my hands up to type anything... ☺
Sometimes it’s just soooo hard to get up in the morning, and it seems so tempting to stay in the warm and cozy bed .. !
So true, I think everyone can relate!
@sirwinchester please check your chat - I left you a message last night, you must be busy - I hope you could get back at me today before midnight, we're on the same time zone. Thank you very much.
I guess many of us have actually wondered about this, hahaha. Thanks for answering our questions.
I thought so too ;) that's why I chose the topic
crazy, I didn’t know there were that many disadvantages. Especially the blood volume …
it's scary how fast our body functions can decrease if we don't take proper care of it!
You are so right, technology is making us EXTREMELY lazy! We rarely have to walk anywhere anymore, and don’t use our bodies enough - that’s why we consciously need to exercise
Many people already take their car to go everywhere, and almost never use their feet anymore..
Funny how we hate napping as kids, but as we grow up we begin to love and cherish sleep so much more !!
Haha, yes exactly! Sleep is precious!
I just LOVE my bed.. I can't help it.. it's too comfy and warm, especially in the mornings!
Oh yes, everyone can probably relate!
Cool post! I agree that staying in bed forever is probably not that cool at all, but just a few more hours in the morning would be perfect.
Yes, I think no one could deny that!!
Great post. I think in summary it is bad all round.
Basically yes!
Did you hear about that NASA experiment where they paid people to lie in bed for 70 days - there's a Vice article here. Sounds like hell to be honest.
Yes I read that too! I wasn't sure if I should include it in my post though, because the conditions are a little different with a reclined bed and that test was for space.
But still, that guy lost so much of his strength and blood volume ... crazy. When he stood up for the first time, his heart beat so fast he almost fainted.
Well at least he got $18.000 for it, but that's not worth risking your health that much.
I think you got the right balance. It would have made it too long as well confusing people if you added it I think and less people would read through to the end.
No it isn't worth it - who knows what the long term effects are. I think there are easier ways of earning $18000.