• Question: What would happen if i broke all the bones in body?

    Asked by agatha window to Angela, Claire, Ian, Robert, Sarah on 17 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Angela Stokes

      Angela Stokes answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      Hi lily
      You would be in a lot of pain and may well die of medical shock as the blood vessels around the broken bones would be damaged causing blood to be lost from the circulatory system meaning there is less blood for the brain and vital organs. You would also be quite swollen due to blood seeping from blood vessels and also due to the inflammatory processes that happen within you body naturally.

    • Photo: Sarah Harris

      Sarah Harris answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      Nothing good 🙁 There are 206 bones in the adult human body and breaking every single one of them would be unbearably painful.

      When a bone breaks there is bleeding from both the bone itself and the surrounding tissues, which will start to coagulate and clot to prevent blood loss. This starts a signalling cascade that brings white blood cells and fibroblasts to the break, building a collagen matrix, which then lays down the foundation for new bone.

      So if you broke every single bone this process would be happening in 206 different places, requiring an enormous amount of energy and putting you at risk of blood clots, shock, compartment syndrome…and that’s just to name a few. If you got immediate medical attention then there’s a chance you could survive, but it would be a long process to recovery with multiple operations and physiotherapy and no guarantee you’d regain full mobility.

      Probably best to keep your bones intact then.

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