Does hanging upside down make you feel a little panicky……like your head might explode, your spit might pool in your nose and drown you, or your eyes might pop out of their sockets? Don’t worry, none of those things would happen. However, hanging out in a head-down position isn’t completely harmless. In fact, being suspended upside down for too long will eventually kill you. It turns out that your lungs sit atop your other organs for a reason. Delicate organs can easily get squashed by bigger, heavier organs like the liver and intestines that sit below them. That doesn’t pose a problem when you’re lying on an incline or standing on your feet, but when your head is directly underneath your feet, your lungs simply can’t absorb enough oxygen to work. It’s not just the lungs you have to worry about during extended periods of reverse suspension. Blood vessels are customized to make sure blood doesn’t pool up in our feet. Our bodies weren’t meant to have blood pool in the brain, and when it does, a brain hemorrhage can occur. Then there’s the heart. When you’re head down, your heart slows down its pumping and starts receiving more blood than it has the capacity to manage at one time. It begins to have a hard time maintaining blood pressure, and eventually loses its ability to move enough blood around to maintain all the body’s essential functions. Finally, there’s the mesentery — a fold of tissue that attaches to the intestines and other abdominal organs to anchor the intestines in place. When you’re hanging upside down for an extended period, it becomes easy for your intestines to become twisted. When that happens, the diaphragm doesn’t have adequate space for inhalation and exhalation, cutting off your ability to breathe. While inversion does have some health benefits, it must be limited to short stints. If you’re upside down and you start to feel like something is off, stop.
