what would happen if you stayed in the bath?

[cap'n spanky]

well, you know, if you had food, drink and entertainment freely available, some sort of fitness regime and some sort of device for taking away your waste... so basically your normal life but your body being submerged in water all the time... would you get all waterlogged and swell up like a.. umm... something that swells up a lot?

[becks]

I turn into a prune after about an hour or so, my fingers and toes go all wrinkly, I heard that having a bath is also a good hangover cure as your body absorbs some of the water and rehydrates you, but i don't think you could soak up a whole bath - we're not sponges!! plus you might get cold so you'd have to top up with hot water and let cold out. why? are you planning on getting in the bath and never fcoming out?

[bluedolphin]

you would suffer from some kind of medical problem causing the skin to do strange stuff. This has stopped attempts to get into the guinness book or records for standing under a shower for the longest time....I used to know the medical term ...but it just seems to have slipped my mind at the moment...

[boognish76]

Well, trench foot was caused by the feet being constantly wet from the water in the bottom of the trenchs, so maybe you would get trench body!

[Kit]

You wouldn't soak up water indefinitely because skin is held on by connective tissue - hence wrinkling, which is when the skin in between soaks up water but the connective tissue doesn't. However, your skin is now very soft and easily damaged, and where there is damage, there is the possibility of infection... Assuming you could get round the skin problems, your joints would seize up through being in one position - so let's relocate to the swimming pool. Ah, but water is a very powerful absorber of heat, so you're getting hyporthermic. Let's heat up the pool. That's more comfortable - but now it's dropping your blood pressure as your skin capillaries dilate to get rid of the excess heat, plus it's increasing your metabolic rate and kidney function, so whatever thingy you've got for dealing with pee is working overtime. Net result is after quite a short time you're dehydrated, feeling a bit light headed and very, very tired.
Hydrotherapy pools are generally around blood heat, and recommendations for staff to stay in the pool are around 3 hours a day. Much more than that and the fatigue sets in.

[cap'n spanky]

wow! Cheers Kit!!