> With the body it is almost always use it or lose it.
It is wild how intense this effect is. Last year, I broke my ankle. I couldn't use that leg at all. Within two months, almost all of the muscle in that calf was gone. Just eight weeks and while one leg still looked normal and the other was a stick. Even the flesh that was still there was soft and spongy.
When I got an X-ray later, the surgeon said I had the bones of an 80-year-old in that leg. All the bone density, just gone.
It's crazy how rapidly a human body will cannibalize itself if you don't use something. From what I've heard, this is an evolutionary adaptation unique to humans. Most other animals just have the muscles they have regardless of use. But, perhaps because we went through a narrow population window during the Ice Age, we've evolved this ability to harvest our own resources to survive.
Probably great for not starving to death, but a real bummer if you're trying to be fit.
It is wild how intense this effect is. Last year, I broke my ankle. I couldn't use that leg at all. Within two months, almost all of the muscle in that calf was gone. Just eight weeks and while one leg still looked normal and the other was a stick. Even the flesh that was still there was soft and spongy.
When I got an X-ray later, the surgeon said I had the bones of an 80-year-old in that leg. All the bone density, just gone.
It's crazy how rapidly a human body will cannibalize itself if you don't use something. From what I've heard, this is an evolutionary adaptation unique to humans. Most other animals just have the muscles they have regardless of use. But, perhaps because we went through a narrow population window during the Ice Age, we've evolved this ability to harvest our own resources to survive.
Probably great for not starving to death, but a real bummer if you're trying to be fit.