Eli5:why laying down on the bed for long periods of time in a day is not as dangerous as sitting down?
In: Biology
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.
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