Your body shrinks in height every day, and grows every night!
Okay, I know this sounds absurd. But it’s true, read on…..
While you are sleeping the discs in your back are absorbing moisture from the soft tissue surrounding them and the limited blood flow (oxygen) that surrounds them (again primarily from the soft tissue/muscle surrounding them, there is no direct blood supply to your discs). This has the effect of filling them up, kind of like getting a sponge, squeezing it, and while it is being squeezed put it in a bucket of water and release it. The sponge soaks up the water, in doing so it becomes bigger, same applies to the discs in your back.
If you are sitting or standing you are putting pressure on the discs in your back. During the day while you are doing load bearing activities your discs are essentially being squeezed from your upper body weight. This squeezing is like squeezing a sponge full of water, Which reduces the width of the disc. ie reduces your height.
I know this still sounds a bit strange, and your probably thinking the difference would be negligable, but this effect can modify your height between 1/4 inch up to 2 inches (depending on your age). For those on the metric system that is 0.64cm to 5.08cm. If you don’t believe me give it a go, measure yourself when you get up in the morning, and then again late at night. There will be a difference!
This ongoing effect over a lifetime can end up ’shrinking’ a person. As the fluids escape and refill everyday and night of your life your disc slowly loses its ability to absorb the fluids back in, hence some older people have lost significant stature and get sciatic leg pain (from more pressure on and around the nerves that run to your legs).
This is also the reason that many herniated disc sufferers complain of stronger back pain at night than in the morning, because towards the end of the day there is less space left for the nerve to move, which means more pressure, which means more pain.
It is this effect that gives patients a short period of relief when using inverter beds, traction & the cox technique, however these techniques have also shown that the sustained negative pressure being created inside the disc (from hanging upside down, or being pulled apart) can actually ’suck’ the protruding disc material back in… so there are other forces at play.
Interesting!
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August 15th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
that’s amazing!!!!!!
August 18th, 2007 at 11:03 am
I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding Your body shrinks in height every day, and grows every night!, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong
August 18th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Hi Daniel,
Have you tried measuring your height?
I did, and I’d shrunk just over 1/4 of an inch over the course of a long day.
Apparently it is this same process that contributes to astronauts lower back pain when they go into space. Basically because there is no gravity, all the discs keep absorbing, and stretch the nerve out, and they get reasonably bad back pain. There are other things at play as well, for instance all of your core muscles relax because there is no gravity, and then you can get misalignment of some vertebrae in the lower back which also contributes to the pain.
Cheers
Matt
August 19th, 2007 at 9:35 am
I couldn’t understand all of this article ‘Your body shrinks in height every day, and grows every night!’ , but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.