eli5 how do compression stockings help your body while flying on an airplane? And is it just older people that should be wearing them?

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eli5 how do compression stockings help your body while flying on an airplane? And is it just older people that should be wearing them?

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>how do compression stockings help your body while flying on an airplane?

They squeeze your legs (and everything inside your legs, including the veins and arteries) and help blood return to the heart. By squeezing your blood vessels they reduce the diameter of the vessel, which squirts blood through the vessel faster and with greater volume.

Think about holding a garden hose and putting your thumb over the nozzle. You’re constricting the flow of the hose, but increasing the speed of the water coming out of the hose. Compression stockings use the same principle to squirt blood through your blood vessels faster.

This can be explained with Bernoulli’s principle, which states that reducing the diameter around a flowing fluid increases the speed of the fluid.

Here’s are some non-ELI5 links:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4081237

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/fluids/fluid-dynamics/a/what-is-bernoullis-equation

People wear them while flying on airplanes because they know they’re going to be sitting for a long time. You can wear them any time you know you’ll be sitting for a while, not just on airplanes. They’re also worn daily by people with poor circulation to help increase circulation.

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