Like, when you lean on a counter then you are has an indentation for a few minutes.
Is it because of water retention?
In: Biology
Imagine a partially soaked sponge on a countertop and you’ve decided to poke it. It indents a bit due to being compressed and maybe some water comes out. When you remove your finger the sponge springs back to its original shape and absorbs the water that leaked out earlier. Now imagine that the water is blood and the sponge is a collective of your individual cells. Your skin is an organ and it’s highly vascularized (full of blood), so when it’s indented the blood leaves the area, but when the pressure is released all the blood rushes back in over the area that was compressed.
Our flesh is squishy. It has some elasticity and will eventually return to its original shape/position when displaced, but this doesn’t happen instantly. Think of gently bending a piece of soft plastic – it’ll stay bent for a while, but slowly it’ll return to more or less its original shape.
The water retention you’re thinking of is an abnormality called edema, which is a clinical condition potentially caused by increased water retention. Because there’s extra water, the flesh swells up, and indentations become more prominent (this is known as pitting edema, because pressure forms pits).
Our body itself isn’t exactly solid (save for a few parts), meaning that it can compress and decompress.
This property is what causes the indentations. It’s similar to a seat cushion. Before you sit on it, it’s one shape, normally more full looking, but after you sit on it for a few minutes, once you get up the seat retains the shape of your butt.
Water retention is unrelated and is when fluids (most specifically water) builds up in your body and can be treated by mainly eating less salt.
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