Erin Allman-Updike

After that initial 24 to 72 hours after a burn, your body enters a new phase that's called the hyperdynamic and hypermetabolic flow phase.

And you can kind of think of this as your body like releasing all the stress hormones that it has.

So you're still alive.

Your body has kept you alive for this first few days.

And now it's recognizing that without stress,

a portion of your largest organ being able to thermoregulate, being able to regulate the water in your body, being able to protect you from infection, your body is going to have to compensate in a huge, huge way.

So what we see are blood vessels actually clamping down, so a real decrease in vascular permeability.

We see your heart rate going up.

We see the like small blood vessels or the microvasculature of the area around that wound starting to heal and redistribute blood to these areas to actually promote healing rather than just like kind of freaking out like they were at first.

Right.

And then we also see huge increases in our basal metabolic rate.

So our body literally starts burning way more energy than it has in the past.

And what is so wild about burns are that these changes in metabolism and total body functioning, like changes in cardiac output, changes in insulin and glucose regulation, changes in heat production, last for years following a severe burn.

Really?

Yes.

So if we see body surface area burns of 20% or greater, then these changes in metabolism can last for two or more years.

And this is, okay, I have so many questions about everything.

Yeah.

And that's like, at that point, what does the burn, like what does the burned skin or tissue look like?

Has it been healed?