when you use a torniquette, what happens to the blood that is sent to the blocked artery as more blood is pumped in? Does it somehow get absorbed, does it flow back or does it just stagnates there?
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Blood doesn’t just cycle around your body like Hot Wheels on a Super-Charger track. All of your major arteries have smaller branch arteries off them, and even smaller capillaries off those. Then, finally, the blood is absorbed into whatever needs blood—muscles, bones, and other organs. And the reverse on the way out: blood leaves the organ via capillaries, which feed into small veins, which ultimately connect to large veins and back to your heart. It’s all a big mesh, really—but that’s hard to draw in diagrams, so we usually simplify them.
So when you cut off a pathway with a tourniquet (or amputation, or clotting, etc.) more blood takes other routes—like when there’s an accident on the highway and your parents have to get off and drive on the smaller city streets. You still get where you’re going, but on a different route than you might have otherwise. Same for blood cells!
Blood is mostly water and your kidneys are in charge of how much water is in your blood. If there’s too much, excess water is removed as pee, if there isn’t enough, water is pulled out of other parts of the body.
The blood trapped under the tourniquet will start to go bad in the veins. That’s why it’s so important that the tourniquet is left in place until the casualty reaches a hospital. If it is taken off abruptly without the proper medications, the bad blood will stop the heart.
If the doctors know how long the tourniquet was in place, they can figure out what kind of medicine they need to remove the tourniquet safely.
It’s like when you shut off your water faucet. The water is still there and under the pressure of the system, but it can’t flow like it used to.
It does get more complicated because there are other ways it can go and liquid can leave as lymph. In general though that is a good ELI5 analogy, you shouldn’t have a torniquette on long enough that much else matters.
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