David Blaine is not really hanging upside down for 60 hours, according to FOXNews.com's eyewitness who photographed the magician standing right-side up Tuesday.
The revelation would seem to deflate
"About once an hour he has to come down for a medical check, to stretch, and to relieve himself, because even David Blaine can't do that upside down," said Patrick Smith, an executive vice president at Rubenstein Associates. "He has said all along that there will be times when he must get his head above his heart."
Smith continued, "The doctors told him if he doesn't do that, he will die."
Another witness at the scene told our source that
On Monday, Blaine said he was "doin' all right" after stringing himself upside down above Central Park's Wollman ice skating rink in New York City earlier that day.
Wearing a safety harness attached to a crossbar,
Sounding nasal from sinus pressure,
"The legs go pins and needle very fast," he said, adding that stretches — kind of an upside-down sit-up — seem to help.
As a child,
"Live with Regis and Kelly" host Kelly Ripa also put on a harness and hung upside down with
"I’ll need lots of liquids so I won’t have to go into organ failure again, which has happened twice," he said.
Other medical difficulties: Swelling of the eyes and "there’s the possibility of blood hemorrhaging in the brain," he told Ripa, along with going into an altered state due to sleep deprivation.
Doctors, who will be monitoring him throughout the feat, say the increase in blood pressure raises the risk of stroke or blindness, and gravity could restrict the blood flow to his lower extremities.
The spectacle is set to conclude in an ABC television special Wednesday night when
In November 2000,
FOX News.com's Joshua Rhett Miller and The Associated Press contributed to this report.