Since sleepless nights beget stupid questions… Could a healthy person with average bone density & bone strength break his/her own ribs using just their hands? (in other words just by pressing on them without the aid of a blunt object or a hard surface to press against.) Are people strong enough to do that? Even if we are strong enough, would the pain of the attempt keep us from following through?
With people of average bone density, I’d have to say no. Snopes says the jury is still out on whether sneezing can break a rib.
Well, it would me. I mean, what’s my motivation?
For the most part, no they could not.
Ribs are tough, and flexible, and the leverage is not attainable.
Nothing is “absolutely never” in medicine, but I don’t see it happening. And over the years I have seen a zillion assorted rib injuries.
On the coughing/sneezing front, Snopes aside, I would say “possible” but it is true that when you get right down to a specific claim of having done so with otherwise totally normal physiology, it ends up having been a clinical diagnosis.
(Of course, when you talk about “pressing against something” that opens up a larger can of worms, so…)
If you had a strong enough person to begin with- ie: someone physically fit enough to break bones or with the knowledge of how to do so, and then intoxicated them enough and then yeah, I don’t see why not…
They would have a dulled response to the pain, and if motivated enough, they may not realize it until it was too late. Unless by healthy you also meant not under any substances at the time of the experiment.
Though it’d be WAAAY easier if they could press up against something that’s for sure, then you just get them to fall enough times from the right angles and you can probably break what ever you need in there.
Otherwise, the only other way I could see a NORMAL not impaired by any substances person doing it- is if they were sufficiently motivated that their own body was producing endorphins and such like crazy to give them the high to do it, sorta like those *Saw *scenarios where someone’s life is on the line and such.
There was that guy in the news whose arm was caught under a rock in a landslide, and who managed to hack it off to free himself using only a pocket knife. So if you’re motivated enough, I guess you can do just about anything to your own body.
But I agree with the other posters that you’d probably need some sort of object to break your own ribs.
Nah, I was thinking of health just in terms of their bones being free of disease and/or congenital defects that would make them abnormally fragile.
My girlfriend broke a rib from coughing when she contracted pneumonia about 10 years ago, does that count?
For the record, she’s otherwise very healthy, fit and strong (and has had regular health checks to establish this) and has never broken another bone.