The circulatory system carries good nutrients and oxygen to cells whilst removing CO2 and other waste products. Sitting or remaining inactive for long periods prevents this system from operating as efficiently as is possible. Inverting, even for short periods, helps your body to redress the balance, it moves blood from your legs and torso up to the heart and lungs to be purified and re-energised.
Tense or cramped muscles trap waste and toxins causing pain and stiffness. Inversion helps muscles relax by removing normal stresses and promotes improved blood flow, flushing pain-producing toxins.
Similarly Inversion can be beneficial for varicose veins. The downward pull of gravity causes blood to pool in veins causing them to distend and become painful. Inverting allows gravity to work in your favour and move this blood up and out, allowing veins to return to more a normal size.
Although only 3% of total body mass the brain uses 25% of the body's oxygen intake. Inverting drastically increases the flow of blood to the brain and can therefore lead to a marked improvement in the amount of oxygen being delivered.
The circulatory system plays a critical role in the health of the bodies' cells. The blood carries nutrient and oxygen to cells, while removing carbon dioxide and waste. The blood also transports hormones and is responsible for regulating body temperature. The circulatory system therefore operates on many levels to help keep the body well. Even though the heart moves the blood through the body, it is a system that responds to and requires movement; however most of our day is spent in the sedentary seated position.
The circulatory system must work against gravity to retrieve blood from your legs and lower torso. According to the book Better Back, Better Body1 by Joanne Broatch:
When you are in an inverted position-and this does not necessarily mean completely head down-you are helping your heart move venous blood from your legs and torso to the heart and lungs to be purified. When you are inverted, your heart is aided by gravity. This speeds the waste-laden blood from your lower body to your heart and lungs to be cleansed and rushes fresh, oxygen rich blood from your heart and lungs to your upper body and brain. When a muscle contracts, this squeezes capillaries and slows removal of wastes from the muscle. Sustained muscle contraction due to stress or cramping causes wastes to accumulate in the tissue and this produces pain. What inversion does for muscles is encourage blood flow through them in their relaxed state, clearing out the pain-producing toxins trapped in the tensed muscles. By stimulating circulation, inversion can help relieve varicose veins. Varicose veins are caused when blood pools in the veins due to weakened one-way valves. The downward pull of gravity causes blood to slip back, and over time the vein will distend and become painful. When inverting, the pressure is relieved and the heart is able to clear the blood from the lower body.
The heart must work against gravity to pump blood up to your brain, which is the body's largest consumer of oxygen. Although it is only three percent of the body's total weight, the brain consumes 25% of the body's oxygen intake. Win Wenger, in How to Increase Your Intelligence2, noted that "only those brain cells which are close to an ample capillary blood supply are thoroughly developed. Away from such source of supply, brain cells remain undeveloped and useless." Wenger describes "upside down activities" to increase oxygen supply to the brain. "In short, you can much improve the physical state of your entire brain."
The Wilkins3 and DeVries4 studies also address physiological and circulatory changes in response to changes in body position.
In the October 2000 edition of the Yoga Journal, the article "Everybody Upside Down"5 discusses inverted yoga postures and the benefits of reversing gravity's force on the body:
The human body is sensitive to the fluctuations of gravity because it consists of more than 60 percent water. From the skin in, the body is dense with cells, floating in a bath of intercellular fluid. A complex network of vessels weaves in and around every cell, steadily moving fluids through valves, pumps and porous membranes, dedicated to transporting, nourishing, washing and cleansing. According to David Coulter, Ph.D., who taught anatomy at the University of Minnesota for 18 years, when one inverts, tissue fluids of the lower extremities drain - far more effectively that when one is asleep. Areas of congestion clear.
In a 1992 Yoga International article on the Headstand and the circulatory system, Coulter wrote, "If you can remain in an inverted posture for just 3 to 5 minutes, the blood will not only drain quickly to the heart, but tissue fluids will flow more efficiently into the veins and lymph channels of the lower extremities and of the abdominal and pelvic organs, facilitating a healthier exchange of nutrients and wastes between cells and capillaries."
In Pickering's book Exercises for the Autonomic Nervous System6, he discusses changes in circulation in response to changes in body position: With each change of body position, the ANS makes compensatory blood pressure adjustment for all portions of the body. The arteriole system has pressure receptors (baroceptors) located at different hydrostatic levels (in the neck and chest). When the body moves to a different orientation in the gravitational field, the firing rate of the baroceptors changes. The ANS reads the firing rate of the baroceptors at different hydrostatic levels and computes what modifications are needed to maintain suitable blood pressure throughout the body. Exercise programs that include inverted postures work neural circuits of the autonomic nervous system that are otherwise neglected, pushing blood pressure regulatory systems to tolerable limits.
1 Broatch, J. (1996): Better Back, Better Body - The New Inversion Way. Vancouver, BC.
2 Wenger, W. (1975): How to Increase Your Intelligence. New York: Dell.
3 Wilkins, R., et al. (1950): Circulatory effects of the head-down position (negative g) in normal man, with a note on some measures designed to relieve cranial congestion in this position. Journal Clin. Invest. 29: 940-949.
4 DeVries, H. (1985): Vagotonis Effect of Inversion Therapy Upon Resting Neuromuscular Tension. American Journal of Physical Medicine 64: 119-12.
5 Yoshikawa, Y. (2000): Everybody Upside Down. Yoga Journal. 94-101, 174-177.
6 Pickering S.G. PhD. (1981): The Gravitational Field and Inverted Body Postures. Exercises for the Autonomic Nervous System: 69-75, Charles C. Thomas.
Results may not be typical and vary by user.
Please check with your physician prior to inverting.
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- Just to let you know that I am a proud owner of the Inversion Table since Aug. 1998. I must say it is a great machine, very professionally built. I truly believe that it has helped me with not only stretching my spine but also helps me maintain it's alignment.
- I make the time to use it on a regular basis, in my busy work schedule even if it is only for a few minutes. I feel especially great after the inversion when the blood circulates much more easily throughout the body, including the head. My wife has also learned to appreciate this machine. We both will hang on to this machine for as long as we can. It also makes a great conversation piece, when our friends and neighbors see it. Congratulations!
—Tony, Ottawa, Ont.
- I make the time to use it on a regular basis, in my busy work schedule even if it is only for a few minutes. I feel especially great after the inversion when the blood circulates much more easily throughout the body, including the head. My wife has also learned to appreciate this machine. We both will hang on to this machine for as long as we can. It also makes a great conversation piece, when our friends and neighbors see it. Congratulations!
- Getting inverted relieves and relaxes not only my joints and vertebrae but lets my organs and blood flow more naturally. Being inverted at least 30 minutes a day improves my performance capability by stimulating my vestibular system and allows decompression of my spine to occur.
- —Mike Sandber, Skydiver