Science Video: The Dangers Of Hanging Upside Down; How It Kills You

How long can you hang upside down before you die? If you’re trying to be like the Amazing Spider-Man, just don’t do it for a lot of hours in a row without taking a break. Watch this video which explains the dangers.

SciShow host Olivia Gordon offers multiple explanations for why hanging upside down could kill you, like your organs re-settling to sit on top of your lungs, reducing your oxygen supply. Then there’s heart failure, from blood rushing to your pump and the difficulty your heart has in circulating it back out.

The lack of oxygen, called asphyxiation, was what killed a bunch of rabbits in an upside down experiment in the late 1990s — scientists on that project were studying “the course of respiration and circulation in a head-down position,” and found that 14 rabbit subjects died between 17 and 44 hours because of restricted respiration. They concluded, “It is possible to survive for at least half a day in a head-down position.”

Read: How Can You Tell If Someone Is Dead?

The upside down death is officially referred to as “reverse suspension” or “inverse suspension,” not to be confused with reverse hanging, a form of torture which involves binding a person’s wrists behind their back and then hanging them from that joint. There is also death by “suspension trauma,” which comes from being upright for too long and most commonly affects people who are strapped into harnesses.

But just like rabbits, in humans a death by inverse suspension wouldn’t happen right away — according to Gordon, the majority of people who die from hanging upside down were trapped in that position for long periods of time. There have also been incidents in which alcohol intoxication was involved.

Even if you don’t die from acting like Batman, hanging upside down is not good for your eyes: “Your eye is just a squishy orb filled with fluid which focuses light onto your retina so you can see,” Gordon says. Reversing your body for a long time can increase pressure and affect your eyesight.