Your skull, femur and rib cage are now gone. Along with the rest of your skeleton. Welcome to your body without bones. This essential part of your anatomy has suddenly gone ‘poof.’ What happens now?
How would this make you incredibly sick? Why would you lose all your teeth? And how long would you last as a boneless blob?
So why are your bones so important? Well, your skeletal system is made up of tendons, ligaments and cartilage. And it’s not just a sturdy structure that keeps you standing straight. Your bones produce blood cells, fats and minerals that support your entire body.
But now, we’re going to take all these essential bones out of you, from your skull to the phalanges of your toes.
Forget about keeping your feet on the ground. You’re now a human jellyfish, and you won’t last very long.
So what exactly would your boneless life be like? Well, for starters, you wouldn’t be able to move. Now you can watch What If videos in bed all day – guilt free! And don’t panic. Just take a deep breath. But not too deep because you don’t have a ribcage. And without a ribcage, your lungs won’t be able to expand.
Not having bones means you’d need to be hooked up to a ventilator 24/7. And now, you’re way more susceptible to infections because your airways are always open. This would let all sorts of nasty germs in. A common cold could quickly become pneumonia.
But pneumonia would be the least of your worries. That’s because, without your bones, you don’t have any bone marrow. OK, so why is this such a big deal? Because your bone marrow is the main part of the body that produces your white and red blood cells.
And without new blood cells, your immune system will be weaker. You’ll be susceptible to diseases like leukemia.
But at least you can try to enjoy a nice meal without any bones.You wouldn’t have any teeth. Your teeth aren’t bones, but they are anchored in your jawbone. Without a jawbone, nothing would be holding your teeth in place. You wouldn’t be able to chew, and you’d need to be fed through a feeding tube.
There aren’t many positives when it comes to a life without bones. Sure, you would avoid bone-related diseases, and you wouldn’t have to worry about breaking any of your bones again, but that’s about it. The worst part is, you wouldn’t last very long. Without the structure and support that bones give to your body, and with no bone marrow to produce blood cells, your survival would be measured in minutes to a few hours.
OK, well what if instead of instantly removing our bones, we just evolved without them? If we evolved without bones, we would never have made it out of the ocean. We’d be living our lives like human jellyfish. Or we might’ve evolved to have an exoskeleton, like a clam.
Sounds gross, I know. But the good news is that you wouldn’t have to deal with it for long. Your lifespan would decrease significantly since a skeleton provides much-needed protection for your organs.Your squishy brain would be left without its hard helmet, leaving your noggin extremely vulnerable. And your heart, lungs, and liver would also be in danger without your ribcage.
Okay, this was a bad idea. Our bones do way more than we give them credit for, and we shouldn’t take them for granted. Did you know some people have a rare genetic disease similar to having no bones? It’s called hypophosphatasia, and it affects one in 100,000 babies born. People with this condition have bones that have difficulty absorbing calcium and phosphorus, making them incredibly weak and prone to breaking.
Thankfully, doctors are working on unique enzyme treatments. These allow the bones to slowly grow back, so patients can move again. Our bones are essential. Sure, they can break and they might get in the way of things, but without them, we wouldn’t be able to live. Now instead of having no bones, what if your stomach acid suddenly disappeared?
