this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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If your body healed as fast as your tongue you would starve to death.
Can you elaborate please?
I'm not sure how they got to that conclusion, but we can kinda guess.
The tongue is PACKED with blood vessels, so in case of any damage it can get tons of nutrients to fix itself. But this takes a very energy-intensive.
So if the rest of the body would have the same density of blood vessels, we'd need drastically more energy to feed all of that.
And I guess they're asserting that all else being the same we wouldn't be able to ingest or process sufficient food to keep that going.
It's a bit of a strange argument though, I'm going far outside of my physiology understanding, but you'd have to imagine that had we evolved such advanced healing capabilities, we'd have also evolved the means to feed them. And OP underestimates just how much food someone can eat. As someone dealing with an ED, I can tell you that you can easily triple your calorie intake (though whether that's sufficient I wouldn't be able to say...).
All in I'd look forward to OP defending their assertion.
I asked ChatGPT, because everyone knows it is a source of reliable and not hallucinated information.
The human body has a remarkable capacity to heal itself, but the rate of healing can vary depending on the type of tissue and the extent of the injury. While it is true that the tongue, due to its rich blood supply, has a relatively fast healing process compared to other parts of the body, it doesn't mean that the entire body would be unable to maintain its energy if it healed at the same rapid rate.
The healing process requires energy and resources, including nutrients, oxygen, and metabolic activity. When a specific area of the body is injured, the body redirects resources to that area to facilitate the healing process. In the case of the tongue, the abundant blood supply helps deliver these resources efficiently, allowing for a faster healing time.
If the entire body were to heal rapidly at the same pace as the tongue, it would require a significant amount of energy and resources. However, the body is highly adaptive and has complex systems in place to regulate energy usage and resource allocation. It prioritizes healing based on the severity and urgency of injuries, allowing for a balanced distribution of resources throughout the body.
It's important to note that healing rates can vary based on factors such as the type of tissue, the extent of the injury, individual health conditions, and other variables. While the tongue may heal relatively quickly, other parts of the body have their own healing mechanisms suited to their specific functions and requirements.
Overall, the human body is designed to efficiently manage healing processes while maintaining energy balance and overall health.
When I asked for sources it started backtracking very quickly
oh, god... its more human than I realized. :(
I apologize, I'm new and not very attentive. I do remember the logic however was unable to find the source. Your body heals approximately 10x slower than your tongue. The claim is that without naturally evolving to the state that both healed equally as fast as you've outlined. It's if by some miracle your body started to heal at the same rate, your body in it's current state would not be able to convert food to energy fast enough to maintain the level and speed of healing. And your caloric intake would need to (I can only assume) 10x what it currently is, and that's a lot of food. I'm sorry to hear of your ED, I trust you recognize I'm not attempting to be pedantic or triggering, I intended this to be as the title stated, a fun fact that people don't believe is true.
I think it means that the energy consumption needed to heal so quickly would be too much.
I had a quick look but didn't find anything. Do you have a source for this?
I did not realize there were inquiries: Please excuse me, I'm new.
Your tongue is the fastest healing organ in your entire body, it uses an excessive amount of energy in order to heal your tongue 10x faster than the rest of your body. If your entire body were to heal at this rate, with the amount that your skin naturally replaces itself, compimented with the increased demand, you would starve to death.
I was also not able to find a source for this. There was a source outlining and comparing the healing speed of the tongue by comparison to the body.
Your gastrointestinal system is basically a continuation of your outer skin ... it does the same thing of keeping foreign material away from your internal organs.
When you think of your body this way .... we are all just basically tubes.