Hacker News Reader

> Spending time horizontal while not asleep is very unhealthy for your heart.

Never heard of this before, any references?

I will try to find some references, but the basic concept is that your heart will atrophy when it doesn't have to work against gravity, as in pumping blood from foot to head, while vertical.

This is why standing desks are a thing, why an astronaut will lose 30% of his heart-mass after one year on the ISS, and why patients after a long coma have a hard time doing cardio.

edit:

"Cardiac atrophy after bed rest and spaceflight"

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11883764_Cardiac_at...

"Cardiac atrophy in women following bed rest"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17379748/

Seems like it should be easy enough to offset with exercise though? Like if you’re doing cardio a few days a week you’re not going to suffer too much by chilling in bed a couple evenings.

Yeah, this seems possible. I was thinking of someone more generally increasing their horizontal time without doing anything to make up for it. This is my own projection, as it is what I have been guilty of doing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com