Eli5:why laying down on the bed for long periods of time in a day is not as dangerous as sitting down?
In: Biology
Laying down for long periods is more dangerous. We try to avoid long periods of bed rests in hospitals. It can cause:
• muscle loss
• poor circulation of blood
• shallow breathing
• bed sores
• vertigo
When you are sitting, your legs are lower than your heart, so the blood flowing back to your heart has to flow uphill. Normally, when you are walking or even standing (since you generally don’t stand perfectly still) the movement of the leg muscles helps with pushing the blood back to the heart.
But when you are sitting still, those movements aren’t happening, or not enough at least, and so the blood can get stagnant and clot in some of the leg veins, and when that blood clot is dislodged it can get stuck somewhere like the fine blood vessels in your lungs.
On the other hand, when lying dowm, your legs are at the same height as your heart, and so there is much less effort needed to push the blood back to the heart.
As someone who has frequented the hospital, trust me, it’s way worse. Nurses can and will bug the ever-loving shit out of you just to get you to move from the bed to a chair for 15 minutes, much less walk around the floor.
Not that I don’t appreciate it of course, just that you will absolutely be annoyed with all the things they do to keep you alive and healthy when you are in bad shape and want nothing more than to sleep. SCDs on the legs, incentive spirometer every so often, surprisingly painful lovanox shots, constant reminders to move. Bless them for being able to put up with what is probably pushback from patients. I never pushed back because that’s fucking insane behavior for a patient and I am not about to make their lives harder when they are trying to help, but I have been really, really annoyed lol.
I don’t have an answer, but I believe OP asks why sitting down for a large part of the day as many of us do for working and watching screens is worse than laying on the bed. I’m pretty sure it’s not about hopital stays.
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