Mars: it's humanity's next big goal in space,
with plans by NASA to put people on its surface sometime in the next two decades. As part of its preparations for a Mars mission,
NASA wanted to find out what the effects of extended exposure to microgravity would do
to the human body. In order to explore the issue, NASA paid several
people thousands of dollars to lay around in bed for several weeks- studying how their
muscles atrophied and weakened from a lack of exercise. Today, NASA is definitely not as inspiring
as it was in the Apollo era, but we're still inspired to go ahead and find out what a whole
week of being a couch- err, bed- potato would do to the human body. So once more we're putting our finest scientists
and engineers on the question- and since we have literally none of that, we're just going
to go ahead and have our resident lab rat earn his cheddar by laying up in bed for a
week straight! Day 1: I'm a big fan of NASA, and anything
space related really. I think there's nothing humanity does that's
nobler than our quest to understand and explore space, so imagine my excitement when The Infographics
Show told me that they had a challenge for me straight from NASA! I've been forced to live in the wild for three
days straight, be homeless for another three days, move in with my parents for a whole
month! When I heard that this next challenge involved
NASA, the possibilities were endless! Would I be going to space camp?! Maybe to a real-live rocket launch? Would I get to meet an astronaut? Nope. I get to lay in bed for seven days straight,
all because somebody over at the office read an article about a NASA bed study and thought,
“Hmm, this sounds horrible- let's get the challenge guy to do it!” It was probably the narrator, sometimes in
my scripts I force him to pronounce really terrible words and I think he has it in for
me. Check out our Lightning + Volcano video where
I forced him to pronounce the name of every major Icelandic volcano. Alright, so as usual let's go over the rules. Rule number one: No leaving the bed except
for bathroom breaks. This does not include a shower by the way,
which means I'm going to have to resort to the old baby wipe shower from my days in the
military. Rule number two is I can't move around, I
have to replicate the NASA study as closely as possible. I headed on over to nasa.gov and read up on
the study, and participants were encouraged to move their upper bodies around but not
their lower bodies. Apparently astronauts in space mostly use
their upper bodies which kind of makes sense- there's no walking in zero g and in space
you can use hands for grabbing on to stuff and pushing off, but legs are kind of useless. Unlike the NASA participants though, I am
doing this challenge alone. I mean the girlfriend will be around, but
she's got her own life and no way in hell could Infographics pay her enough to lay down
for a week straight. I'm pretty sure she would go criminally insane
if she wasn't allowed to jog and exercise for seven days in a row. The NASA subjects had other people in the
room with them, and I guess that helped pass the time. I even saw a photo of two of the participants
playing Connect Four together, with the game on a small table between their beds. I did some research on what happens to your
body when you're stuck in bed, and well, it's mostly not good. Back in the 1900s and earlier doctors prescribed
bed rest for everything from the common cold to decapitation, because you know, medical
science still thought that blowing smoke up someone's bum could help resuscitate them
from drowning- that's a fact and you should look it up. Turns out though that getting fresh air and
sunshine isn't just something your mother used to say to get you to stop playing video
games, but is actually healthy and beneficial for a body that's recuperating from injury
or illness. Obviously your muscles deteriorate from a
lack of activity- gravity constantly forces your muscles to keep you upright so they're
always getting a work out every time you stand up. Did you know though that long bed rest can
even affect your bones? Without the stress of keeping you upright
bones lose density and become more prone to breaking. Blood can also pool in your legs, which can
potentially lead to things such as blood clots. While immobile your heart actually beats quicker
and pumps blood around the body at lower volumes, which means less oxygen. This is why you can actually feel more tired
after loafing around then if you were just engaging in normal activity. There's literally a laundry list of bad stuff
that can happen from laying in bed for a week straight, and I don't feel like scaring myself
anymore than I already have so I'm just going to end right there. I do need to mention bed sores though, which
typically affects older people who are stuck in bed for months at a time. They are caused by blood pooling and the body
not being moved around, and you should absolutely go and do a google image search of bed sores
right now. Or not if you like to keep your lunch down. Alright, I've got my tv, laptop, tablet, playstation
and cell phone along with several books. I think I'm ready for this. See you guys in a few days. Day 3: I gotta say, I'm not exactly thrilled
with this challenge. I remember about a year and a half ago I was
approached with the idea of doing crazy challenges for The Infographics Show. I thought it sounded exciting, even if my
very first one- eat the hottest pepper- was extremely painful and almost sent me to the
emergency room. I never really mind the danger or discomfort,
as long as I'm doing something new and weird and out of the ordinary. Laying in my bed for three days though has
been the single most boring challenge in the history of challenges. My days typically start in the morning with
the girlfriend getting up to go work out, come back to shower and get ready for work. I have nothing to do so I stay awake to kiss
her goodbye for the day, then I just kind of go back to sleep. I've noticed I sleep a lot more now by the
way, I guess it's a side effect of laying around all day. Now I obviously can't leave the bed for food
or to walk the dog, but that's ok because modern life has a solution to such trivial
problems. I signed up for a dog walking service and
I use both UberEats and Postmates for food delivery, and well, ok, remember my challenge
where I stayed in a bathtub for a day straight? Obviously I needed to sort the issue out with
not being able to answer the door. We have a small one bedroom apartment, and
our bedroom's doors are huge and open right up into the living room. With the doors open I can literally lay in
bed and see the front door, which I have the girlfriend leave unlocked. Then to explain why I can't go to the door
to pick up my food or answer it for the dogwalker myself, well, I'm not super proud of this,
but I had the girlfriend borrow the bottom half of a body cast from the props department
of the show she's on. Basically I can throw this thing on in a hurry
and it looks like I have two broken legs. Don't judge me, judge The Infographics Show. I always make sure to send my delivery person
or dogwalker a note and explain the situation so there's as little weirdness as possible. I still very much remember Susan from my don't
leave the bathtub for 24 hours challenge, so I'm really trying to not freak anymore
delivery drivers out. Susan, if you're out there in internet land-
I'm still sorry, I swear I'm not a creepy weirdo! Alright, so food and dog walking isn't a problem
and you know what? Everyone so far has been pretty cool about
it. They come to the door and bring me my food
to my bed, typically say something like “Hope you feel better soon!”, and I mumble something
like “yeah, thanks” because I feel like a terrible person for pretending to be disabled. At night the girlfriend is in charge of cooking,
which is a total disaster because she may be a modern independent woman that don't need
no man, but she's a terrible cook. While other little girls were pretending to
be princesses, having tea parties, and learning to bake cookies, she was doing martial arts
and basically training to be a secret government assassin. I'm not gonna pretend like that's not kind
of really hot, but man, I really wish I could leave the bed to cook. Food though is its own problem. You know what's really hard? To eat every meal lying down. You feel like you're halfway to choking every
time you swallow, and eating something like soup is a disaster in the making. The girlfriend actually banned me from eating
liquid food because twice now I've made a mess on myself and the sheets trying to slurp
down some soup. She does after all still have to sleep on
this bed at night. My hygiene has definitely taken a bit of a
dive, but the baby wipes help a lot. I know I've said this before, but if you know
anyone deployed overseas, send them baby wipes in your care package. Baby wipes are a godsend for anyone downrange. I totally forgot about brushing my teeth though,
because as the girlfriend loves to point out I often miss the most completely obvious details. I just tell her that's because I'm a big picture
kind of guy, to which she shakes her head and mutters under her breath. I mean, she's not wrong, when I planned our
trip to Bahamas a few years ago I planned literally everything we'd do and totally forgot
to book a hotel. I only remembered when we landed and were
standing in front of the passenger pick-up area and she asked me which hotel shuttle
was ours. I told her that well, any of them could be
ours if we wanted them to be, and that's the story of how we almost ended up sleeping in
the streets of the Bahamas and why I'm no longer in charge of planning trips. Anyways, so I have a bowl and a bottle of
water for brushing my teeth, which the girlfriend has to dump after every time I use it. I reminded her that one day when I'm old and
decrepit she would have to do this for me every day, and she kind of just stared at
me for a moment. I swear I could see her doing the mental math
and calculating if I was worth the investment... I might seriously need to look into this marriage
thing. Nothing else to report. Just a lot of boredom and weirdness trying
to do everyday tasks when you're stuck in bed. Zero out of ten, would not recommend. See you at the end of this. Day 7: Well, I feel like I've been saying
this more lately but I'm glad that challenge is over. I literally leapt for joy when my final hour
was up- and then because I hadn't used my legs for a week I immediately fell over and
twisted my ankle. On the way down, I knocked my head against
the night stand, hard enough to get a bit dizzy. Because I have a history of concussions from
my years overseas, the girlfriend insisted on taking me to the ER, so I hobbled to the
car leaning on her the entire way. Not only was my ankle pretty sprained, but
I could barely keep myself upright due to my legs being so weak. Also the fact that blood now had to go uphill
to get to my brain for the first time in seven days forced my heart to work harder, and it
felt like a racehorse in my chest. I honestly thought for a little bit that I'd
have a heart attack. I really did not expect the impact that laying
in bed for seven days would have on me physically- I thought at best I'd just be a bit weak,
but I was having serious issues. At the ER, the doctor said my blood pressure
was way over and he was seriously concerned by how weak I was. I really, really didn't want to tell him about
what I'd done for a week, or why I did it, but the girlfriend was so concerned she basically
fessed up to the whole thing. So, great, I'm basically now a weird story
the doctors and nurses at my local hospital tell each other every day now- “Hey, remember
that guy that came in with the busted head and twisted ankle? Yeah, he's some sort of youtube weirdo or
something!” Honestly, dignity does not come high on the
list of employee benefits you get working for The Infographics Show. Alright, my ankle's going to take a while
to heal and my head will be fine eventually. The doctor warned me against any more laying
in bed though, and recommended I slowly start to exercise again starting with things like
walking around the block. He also basically gave me the spiel on the
same warnings of what laying all day could do to your body that I had already read online,
but he was familiar with the NASA study and pointed out that they had trained medical
professionals on hand during the entire length of the study. Geez, point taken. Other than my very inglorious ending to this
challenge though, how was the rest of my week? Well, in a word, boring. In several more words: the most boring week
of my life. I remember years ago on a deployment me and
a partner laid under a camo net on the side of a hill for thirty six hours straight, just
watching the backside of a remote village. All we did was watch and count the number
of people in the village, taking careful notes of who went where and for how long. Just hours and hours and hours of watching-
and you know what, that was more exciting than laying in bed for seven freaking days
in a row. You'd think with access to the internet, video
games, and food on delivery laying around wouldn't be that hard- but let me tell you,
there's only so many consecutive games of Xcom 2 Long War you can play before you're
begging for an actual alien invasion so you have a reason to run out of your bed. There's only so many cat videos, meme videos,
and old Star Trek the Next Generation episodes you can watch before you are just aching for
something physical to do. At one point I was fantasizing about a burglar
breaking into the house- practically wishing for it to happen- just so I had an excuse
to leave the bed. My bed, which I normally have an excellent
relationship with because it's warm, cozy, and just the right level of both firmness
and softness, became my prison. I yearned to feel the cool wooden floor of
our apartment under my feet. I even envied the girlfriend every time she
went outside to go for a jog- and if you've been following these challenge episodes then
I've already made my position on running very clear to you. In short, spending a week in bed laying down
the entire time is a different type of hell. Eating became a weird, very stressful activity
and you always feel like you might choke. Forget about soup or anything 'saucy', unless
you want to make a mess all over yourself. The physical effects were probably the worst
though. I felt fatigued all the time, and after the
week was up I could barely walk and keep myself up. I could literally feel the blood pumping in
my head and my heart felt like it was going to call it quits just from the stress of having
to pump blood against the force of gravity again. I applaud the brave men and women who laid
in bed for 90 days so NASA could study the effects of microgravity on the human body,
and I see why they got paid so well for it too. For me though, I'm happy with my eight hours
every night, though I think I'm going to give the couch a try for a few days- me and my
bed need a break from each other right now. I know it was you that did this to me, narrator. This isn't over by a long shot. You know I heard there's a town in Wales by
the name of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwsllllantysiliogogogoch, and I think we should do an entire episode
on it. If you liked this video and want to see more,
and let's face it, of course you did! Then click on this video which is funny and
entertaining OR this video which is entertaining and funny. We'll leave the choice of which up to you,
since we know you're smart and clever enough to make the right decision.
