What happens to your body when you stay at home for a holiday?

Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, experts have repeatedly warned that staying at home as much as possible during holidays and reducing the flow of people is the most effective way to control the epidemic. Some friends really stay at home and cannot go out, lying in bed tossing and turning and unable to sleep. The holiday finally becomes a carnival for one person. This holiday is really simple and unpretentious.

You lying on the sofa watching TV | unsplash

However, who could have expected that just when you were content to spend all your money at home, your body would start to rebel. What changes happen to your body when you stay at home? And how should you deal with it?

When the body is surrounded by pillows and quilts, the muscles on the body gradually relax, and the look is sweet and peaceful. The muscles stretch as if returning to the mother's womb, and every joint of the body seems to be opened. But as you wake up, you still don't want to get up, because you feel: I am sealed and can't get up (it's stupid not to sleep when you have a good sleep).

However, when you lie in bed for longer than normal sleep time, your bones begin to lose calcium due to lack of pressure from walking upright, and even passive slacking can cope with the intensity of physical activity, so the phosphorus bound to calcium also decreases. Although you are unlikely to have problems like osteoporosis for a while, the muscle contraction force decreases due to the decrease in calcium ion concentration in the blood and the weakening of electrical signal transmission, and the muscles begin to atrophy . Although this process is slow, it has begun.

Due to the sudden decrease in exercise, the energy intake exceeded the body's needs, blood lipid levels began to rise , triglycerides and cholesterol gathered in the liver, and the existence of glycogen became redundant and cumbersome, so it began to convert into fat and accumulate in the liver, and also began to accumulate in the subcutaneous and large intestinal mucosa. The energy from Ant Forest (Alipay owed me 5 cents), which was the biggest motivation for walking before, began to accumulate in the body because I couldn't go out and walk enough steps.

I feel like I've gained a few pounds | 500PX

Due to watching TV series every day, the brain's most energy-consuming active thinking behavior begins to change to passive reception of information . The brain, which originally occupied half of the body's oxygen consumption, is also under-operated. The cardiopulmonary autonomic nerve activity only needs to maintain a low level to meet the needs of the brain and body. Therefore, the blood oxygen content in your body also begins to decrease .

Because life is stress-free, you sleep until you wake up naturally, but you still stay in bed, hoping to fall asleep again when you are not paying attention. As a result, your biological clock is completely messed up. It is getting harder and harder to wake up in the morning, and you are less and less sleepy at night. The rhythm is out of balance, the secretion of melatonin decreases , and the time of deep sleep becomes shorter and shorter. Later, the slightest noise will interrupt your sleep, and you keep dreaming about the content of the drama you watched during the day, but the question is why you can't be the male (female) protagonist. You resist angrily in your dream, and when you wake up, you feel much more tired than watching the drama yourself.

I might have taken a nap | pixabay

When you stay at home and don't exercise, the dopamine produced by exercise begins to become thin . When you are full of confidence and want to recharge yourself, you find that you don't even have the mood to open a book. This is not the main reason. What's more unhappy is that you suddenly find that no matter what you do, you are not interested and feel drowsy .

...Only the devil can defeat the devil, and there are many things that can defeat the bed: DOTA, LOL, Honor of Kings, Weibo, Zhihu, TV series, movies... However, in the end, food is still needed to control the situation.

You are horrified to find that although you seem to sleep after eating and eat after sleeping, you never get enough rest. You feel tired doing anything and even breathing becomes a burden. You used to be able to stay up all night, but now it’s hard to even make it through the day.

If you can't go out, and if you don't have the habit of turning on the voice chat when playing games, you will become taciturn and your verbal communication will gradually decrease. Although the mouth has a desire for exercise, it can only be filled with food, so even if the overall appetite is poor, the intake of snacks will be more than usual , and the speed of bacteria breeding in the mouth will also be faster. If you only rinse your mouth after meals and brush your teeth before going to bed, once you burp, you will feel like some biological weapon has exploded in your mouth.

Suffocating | pixabay

In addition, what is even more embarrassing is that less stool comes in, but less stool comes out . Due to the reduction in movement, the intestinal peristalsis decreases, which will affect your bowel movements to a certain extent. Constipation and loose stools are two possible situations.

The really scary thing is that you will gradually adapt to all of the above situations.

According to past experience, it only takes about a week for an astronaut to adapt to various physical changes (space sickness) from the ground to space, so when you have spent a week at home and feeling depressed, it is likely that you have adapted to this situation and all the discomfort has begun to disappear . Then, you may really be too fat to lose weight (fog).

However, the good news is that after a week of lying at home, you should be taller than usual, and the stretched posture allows the cervical and lumbar vertebrae, which have been under pressure for a year, to have a rest. But you should be more interested in the fact that your skin color has become whiter due to less sun exposure, and you are indeed one step closer to having fair skin, beautiful looks and long legs.

Taller, whiter, more beautiful | 500PX

So what? My advice is:

Keep lying in bed and don’t stop!!!

Health tips, good advice

It is impossible to go out, so why not do some exercise to maintain body function? For example, the improved version of " high-intensity interval training " not only increases muscle and reduces fat, exercises the heart and lungs, but also does not require much effort. The details are as follows:

1. Two sets of skipping rope, 1-2 minutes each time;

2. Alternate between two sets of squats and push-ups (or sit-ups), 15-30 in each set.

You can choose one of the above two and do it 2-3 times a week to exercise your cardiopulmonary function and ensure your body's functions.

Of course, if you feel that your physical fitness cannot cope with this intensity of training, then doing the eighth set of radio gymnastics following the video every day will also be very effective.

After 8 iterations of improvements, it not only includes core training and posture correction, but also coordination and flexibility training. In terms of scientificity and perfection, it can be called the most perfect aerobics in the world.

Why not, make one now.

Get up, I'm looking at you | Flickr

Author | Jing Bo, science writer

Editor | Ding Zong

This article is produced by the "Science Rumor Refutation Platform" (ID: Science_Facts). Please indicate the source when reprinting.

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