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What happens to your body when you lay in bed all day?

Prolonged bed rest affects the amount of fluid in your body and the pressure at which blood is pumped, making it difficult for the body to adapt to activity again. It causes changes in the size of the heart, too, and the body's ability to replenish blood.

sun-sentinel.com - THE BAD SIDE OF BED REST HORIZONTAL CAN BE HORRIBLE ...

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When you are sick, doctors often advise getting plenty of bed rest and taking lots of fluids. But there are reasons that prolonged bed rest is not so good for you. Prolonged bed rest affects the amount of fluid in your body and the pressure at which blood is pumped, making it difficult for the body to adapt to activity again. It causes changes in the size of the heart, too, and the body's ability to replenish blood.

In short, the disadvantages of prolonged bed rest can outweigh the benefits.

CHANGES IN PRESSURE

Lying down eliminates much of gravity's influence upon the body. When you are lying down, the blood pressure at the outlet of your left heart, just outside the aortic valve, is the reference pressure. Think of it as 120/70. The pressure will be about the same in all of your arteries, regardless of where they are in the body. Blood flows through smaller and smaller arteries until it reaches the capillaries, the smallest blood vessels of all, and from there it drains into the veins to return to the heart. In the process, it loses its pressure. Fluid leaves your capillaries to provide nourishment and oxygen to your cells. Fluid returns to the most distant part of the capillaries that join to form the veins. The pressure in the veins in your legs, while you are lying down, will be about 10 millimeters Mercury. In the right atrium, where all the veins drain into the heart, the pressure will be about 5 millimeters Mercury. Drastic changes occur when you stand up, and gravity asserts its influence on your body. Your blood vessels form an upright column of blood, like a water tower. The "tower" is the height of the distance between the top of the heart and the ankle. In the average adult male, this alone creates an added pressure of 100 millimeters Mercury. The pressure at the heart level would still be 120/70, but the pressure in the ankle would be 220/170. The leg arteries constrict to prevent all your blood from running into your legs. Gravity also affects the blood pressure in the veins, acting on the column of blood in the veins between the top of your heart and your ankle. So venous blood pressure also will increase by 100 millimeters Mercury. That means the pressure in the veins in your ankle will be 110 millimeters Mercury, not just 10 millimeters Mercury.

GRAVITY AND BODY WATER

All that increased pressure in your veins makes it more difficult for fluid to flow from your cells back into the veins. As a result, as you stand, you accumulate fluid in your tissues. Each leg, from the hip down, will gradually fill to capacity. When you lie down, you eliminate that increased venous pressure. When lying down, fluid more readily flows from your tissues back into the veins. The large volume of blood that accumulated in your legs also shifts to your chest, and expands the right atrium, where blood from veins accumulates. There are stretch receptor nerve cells in the wall of the right atrium (upper chamber of the heart). As these stretch, they send a signal to your brain. The brain, in turn, controls an endocrine mechanism that causes the kidneys to start to eliminate water. A person who is normally hydrated may lose 5 or 6 pounds of water in 24 to 48 hours of lying down. The problem begins when you get out of bed, after the period of bed rest. The loss of water from the legs that has occurred during bed rest decreases the pressure that keeps the thin-walled veins from expanding. The veins expand readily, and a lot of blood pools in the legs. Also, the loss of water from the blood during the time of lying flat has reduced the volume of blood circulating in your body. The combination of pooling of blood in the legs and lower blood volume means that there may not be enough blood getting back to the heart, which can cause fainting.

THE HEART SHRINKS

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A well-conditioned athlete, such as a distance runner, tends to have a large heart. The heart must be able to store a large volume of blood between each contraction. The large-chambered heart is able to pump even more blood during exercise. That makes it possible to deliver lots of oxygen to supply the working muscles. The opposite happens with inactivity. The heart actually gets smaller. Since the heart is not worked at high levels, there is no requirement for it to be able to pump large amounts of blood and it loses its ability to do so. The heart muscle behaves much like other muscles in the body. It increases in size and strength as a response to being asked to do more frequent and harder work. When it is not exercised adequately, it gets flabby or weak, and loses its capacity for work. That may lead to early fatigue of the strained heart muscle and signs of impending heart failure. While your body can quickly replenish its water loss from bed rest and inactivity, you cannot suddenly return your heart to a healthier size and greater strength. This has to be done with a gradual training program, just as you have to train for a period of time to develop strong body muscles. That usually means starting by walking, followed by increasingly strenuous levels of activity.

THE HEART SPEEDS UP

The endurance athlete at rest usually has a slow heart rate, often below 50 beats a minute. When you stay in bed for long periods, your resting heart rate gradually increases. After several months of bed rest, for example, resting heart rates may be as high as 100 beats or more a minute. The small heart is beating fast, pumping a small amount of blood with each beat.

OLD BLOOD, LESS BLOOD

When you stay in bed for a few days, you lose about a pint of fluid from your blood. That causes your blood to be slightly "thicker," because there is less fluid for the same number of red blood cells. This is temporary; your bone marrow will eventually slow down its normal production of red cells. When you are active, your red blood cells speed through your blood vessels and tumble through your heart. The wear and tear on the red cells causes a certain amount of daily loss of these cells. That is one reason why your red corpuscles only last about 115 days. A normally active 150-pound male has about 25 billion red blood cells in his body. Just to maintain this number, his body must produce 215 million new red blood cells each day. In the adult, these are all produced by the bone marrow. With prolonged inactivity, there is less wear and tear on the red blood cells and they last longer. The bone marrow doesn't have to produce so many cells, so its production capacity declines. Also, in an inactive person, there are a lot of old, weak red blood cells just waiting to break apart, which happens with the first return to activity. Consequently, a person's blood will have fewer cells and an increased amount of water when that person first gets out of bed after a long period of rest. He will be anemic. This condition will persist for as long as three weeks, while the bone marrow is redeveloping its capacity to produce enough new red blood cells to meet the daily requirements of an active individual.

BONES MELT AWAY

For years it was known that bed rest caused the loss of calcium from the bones. That occurred in young healthy men who were put at bed rest. No amount of exercise in bed could prevent the loss of calcium. The only thing that was found to stop this was to sit upright -- to subject the body to the normal forces of gravity. Clearly, when a person gets older, and there is a tendency to lose calcium from the bones anyway, bed rest can be downright hazardous to the skeleton. People with osteoporosis should never be placed at bed rest unless it is absolutely necessary.

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EFFECTS ON MUSCLES

About 40 percent of the average person's body weight is from his muscles. Muscles use about 25 percent of the energy the body needs at rest. If they are not worked against resistance, they shrink. A muscle's size depends on the resistance it must contract against. That is why a muscle gets larger as it must contract to lift heavier and heavier weights. The resistance is normally provided by body weight, as well as the resistance imposed by various activities. If you lie in bed for a long time, there is no effective body weight and the muscles begin to atrophy. In reality, the muscles will decrease in size and strength to adapt to whatever stress they must work against.

THAT TIRED FEELING

It is important to realize that physical activity stimulates your metabolic, or energy, system. As your body uses calories, the energy machine must be turned on. When you are inactive, as during bed rest, and more particularly during sleep, your metabolic machinery is turned down, and your energy levels are at their lowest. When the day is over, and you feel tired because you have had to sit all day or have not had much opportunity for physical activity, the solution is not more rest. Almost always, these people will feel a new surge of energy if they simply take a good walk, or engage in some form of physical activity.

WHAT THIS MEANS TO YOU

Just as exercise is beneficial for a person's health, inactivity is harmful. This is all relative. The less active you are, the worse it is for you, while the more active you are (without exhausting your body), the better it is for you. But you can avoid the problems of inactivity by making a point to use all your muscles at least part of the time each day, and using all your joints through their full range of motion. You need to think twice about staying in bed for long periods. If you have a cold or mild illness, you are usually better off to be up in your room, at least, and moving around. There should be an absolute medical requirement for bed rest before a person is put to bed and kept there. In many of these cases, it is still important to take measures to ensure some use of body movements. Whenever you wonder about the advisability of being active, think, rather, about the inadvisability of being inactive.

sun-sentinel.com - THE BAD SIDE OF BED REST HORIZONTAL CAN BE HORRIBLE ...

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