I remember my mom used to tell me not to hang upside down or else all the blood would rush to my head and kill me. She told me this when i was a kid, and i never thought about it again until I was reading an excerpt from the Marquis de Sade and it mentioned it as well…So is it truth or a myth?
No. Absolutely not. It is without a doubt a my…AACCCCCHHHH
I wonder how it got started then
Maybe it started with St. Peter, who insisted on being crucified upside down, since that would be more humiliating than Jesus’ execution (or maybe he knew he’d just black out and be spared the agony)
SO have you guys ever heard about this before or am I nuts?
When I was a kid I used to hang upside down on the monkey bars with frequency. As far as I know, I am not dead. I don’t really see the point in it anymore though.
I believe I was told something similar. Perhaps not that I would die, but that it would have some reverse effect…
I’m not a doctor nor do I play one on TV. But I do have a white shirt and that’s close enough for internet purposes.
I’d speculate that hanging upside down would increase the blood pressure in your head. Obviously this isn’t enough to cause automatic death. But I’d theorize that if someone already had circulatory problems, this additional pressure might be enough to trigger a fatal condition like a stroke or aneurysm. So while hanging upside down is okay for eight year olds or test pilots, it might be a poor idea for a 65 year old pack-a-day smoker who’s eighty pounds overweight.
I never heard of it before; could be one of those things parents say to keep kids from doing potentially dangerous or undesirable things - like “if you keep making faces, one day it will freeze that way” or “you’ll go blind doing that:D”. Slightly off-topic, I read in an old bodybuilding magazine from the 60’s that boys around 12-17 should be hanging by their hands from chin-up bars or closet racks for half an hour a day to stretch their shoulder joints and make them grow broader:rolleyes:.
http://www.illusions.com/sodoku/sodom.htm
check this out-freaky huh
I died of that once.
What?
I got better.
Fighter pilots do this all the time. It’s called negative g-force. can cause what are called “red outs”, but only at High negative g-forces. And they don’t usualy die, unless they don’t come to in time to prevent crashing.
Hasn’t anyone heard of Inversion Boots??? Exercise nuts use them to hang upside down - it does something, I know not what. Refreshes the blood?? You can still buy them in sporting goods and workout stores.
If this were true, you’d have to figure that a lot of existing bat species would be extinct by now.
Well, Zenster, I hear staying underwhater for several hours will kill you, buy da fishes do it all the time, so it must be OK. 
I heard of an interrogation technichque based on this.
Tie someone to an aircraft propellor, head out from the hub, and run the engine (slowly). The problem was that the pooling blood under Gs would burst brain vessels, leaving the visctim a drooling idiot or dead.
This was in a novel, though. Don’t know if it happened in real life.
Actually,
I heard It has the opposite effect.
I learned models do that to keep up their good looks, all the blood going to their head keeps their faces nice somehow. 
St. Peter did not insist on being crucified upside-down because it was more humiliating. He did not think him self worthy of being killed in the same manner as his Lord, thus he asked to be hung upside-down.