"Blood rushing to the head" during handstands: How is it regulated?
Many people who start practicing handstands or headstands report discomfort in their head, ranging from a mild sense of fullness to "my head is going to explode." The standard response in online communities is something like this: The sensation is caused by blood rushing to your head, it's harmless, and it will go away with practice. This oft-cited blog post is a good example.
They seem to be claiming that with exposure, the body becomes more effective at regulating changes in bloodflow that result from being inverted. If this is true, do we know what the regulatory mechanism is and how it improves?
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What happens during inversion?
increase in blood pressure
Oxygen uptake increase
Heart rate decreased significantly
The double product, the frequency of breaths, and tidal volume were not significantly changed
What happens post exercise ?
nonsignificant changes in heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and double product from the pre-inversion baseline standing position.
What are chronic changes
No physiologic adaptations occurred in any of the inverted positions as a result of inversion training.
Mechanism for maintenance of Blood pressure?
There is baroreceptor at aorta and carotid sinus.
These receptors have a baroreflex mechanism that helps maintain normal pressure on the brain and other vital organs.
As the acute adaptation and resetting are correlated using a graphic analysis, we hypothesize that the baroreceptors can recognize a new pressure level within minutes. The inherent ability incurs downward and upward adaptation as well as resetting at lower and higher holding pressure, respectively.link
It is important to note that baroreceptors adapt to sustained changes in arterial pressure. For example, if arterial pressure suddenly falls when a person stands, the baroreceptor firing rate will decrease; however, after a period of time, the firing returns to near normal levels as the receptors adapt to the lower pressure. CV physiology
Adaptation of carotid and aortic baroreceptors
the longest measure time for an almost complete adaptation of mechanoreceptors is about 2 days, which is the adaptation time for many carotid and aortic baroreceptors; however some physiologist believes that these specialised baroreceptors never fully adapt.
[excerpt from Guyton And Hall textbook of medical physiology]-
So, as people practice this handstand posture, slowly the receptors may start to adapt or they might never adapt
Hence, in short, we can say that the body's mechanism either remained the same or adapted a little in long term, while the short term regulation of blood pressure remained the same.
Cerebral blood flow
With the regulation of BP in mind, we can think further about the regulation of cerebral blood flow.
cerebral blood flow is autoregulated extremely well between the arterial pressure limits of 60 mm Hg and 140 mm Hg; further, the cerebral blood flow autoregulation occurs even when the mean arterial pressure Rises to as high as 160 - 180 mm as in case of hypertensive
[Ref. Guyton and Hall Physiology]-
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