Why do you feel more tired when sunburnt?

882 views

Why do you feel more tired when sunburnt?

In: Biology

15 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because your body is spending energy trying to heal you. Also swimming is both good exercise and an efficient way to get sunburnt so that may also play a role

Anonymous 0 Comments

Damage detected on skin surface from prolonged contact with sun rays.

Execute healing and cleanup initiatives to repair damage.

Notice: healing requires resources, this process may cause light fatigue.

Anonymous 0 Comments

You literally have a burn across a large portion of your body. Sometime causing a second degree burn meaning it penetrated the outer layers of your skin to the under layers that are more sensitive to damage. Just like in fighting off an infection if your body is working overtime to repair that much damage it’s going to prioritize energy stores to the cells that need it most.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The Sun emits a ton of light particles. Each particle has a different amount of energy, some having enough energy to hurt your cells causing sunburn. The one’s that cause Sunburn fall under UV (ultraviolet).

When your skin cells absorb this UV light, it breaks apart the structures of these cells. Your body needs to remove this damage and get rid of them. Like any damage your body processes, your skin undergoes inflammation from your damage by the repair cells coming to clean up.

When you have a sunburn, you have millions of these tiny damages invoking a very large immune response causing massive amount of inflammation and raising your body temperature. This amount of work is tremendous and makes you tired. Also, the clean up chemicals the cells make to repair/protect you also make you tired and not feel well.

Anonymous 0 Comments

“Sunburn” is another name for “nuclear radiation damage to millions of cells across a wide area of the body”.

1. There is a flurry of activity by DNA-repair enzymes and other repair processes.
2. Those cells with irreparable damage sense it and commit mass cell-suicide to avoid becoming cancer. Their “bodies” then need to be swept up and taken away.

All together, that is a massive drain on your immune system and body energy stores. And at the same time, being sunburnt probably means you were outside a long time – which means you’re likely dehydrated and maybe muscle fatigued from hiking, swimming etc. Add all that to the radiation damage and it’s no wonder you’re wiped.

Edit: I didn’t mean alpha/beta/gamma radiation, it’s solar UV (*electromagnetic* radiation from a nuclear explosion) that causes sunburn.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Another factor apart from what everyone has said about skin damage is that you’re also likely to become dehydrated

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because your body is using all its energy/calories trying to repair the damage you allowed the sun to do

Anonymous 0 Comments

You are not just “burned”, the largest organ of your body (the skin) is having widespread inflammatory response to recover from the burn damage.

Inflammatory response is when the immune system is hard at work, and it’s pretty much the same mechanism that makes you feel tired when you are unwell from other causes.

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you really want to be mind blown, getting large tattoos feels much the same, both in skin pain at the tattoo site, and the drained tiredness and malaise I associate with sunburn.

In fact, some even call the reaction “tattoo flu”. Similar thing though, I imagine. Damage to the body, trauma, mild shock, inflammation responses, etc.

Anonymous 0 Comments

[removed]