What are the Consequences of a Sedentary Lifestyle?
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Photo by Karolina Grabowska
By: Mark Sisson
Most people probably assume that the problem with a sedentary lifestyle is that you aren’t moving. (Yes, I see the tautology there.) Every minute, every hour, spent sitting at your desk or lounging on the couch is time you aren’t walking, lifting heavy things, or sprinting. That’s part of the problem with being sedentary, to be sure, and I’ll touch on that in this post. There’s more to it than that, though.
Sedentary behavior is defined as waking activities that generate less than 1.5 METs—sitting and lying down, basically. Experts recognize that even controlling for how much exercise a person gets, sedentary behavior per se is bad for physical and mental health. In other words, even if you hit the gym and walk the dog regularly, being sedentary is harmful.
Sedentary behavior isn’t just the absence of movement; it is the presence of something more insidious.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that sedentary behavior is more prevalent now than at any point in human history. Our grandparents’ generation was three times more likely to have moderately active jobs,1 in ye olden days before so many of us sat in front of computers to work (I say as I type away on my laptop). Even though our ancestors probably enjoyed considerably more leisure time than the average adult today, their non-work time didn’t resemble modern repose. When hanging out in the shade of a tree or sitting around the campfire swapping tall tales, they adopted rest postures like the once-ubiquitous deep squat. Their bodies weren’t cushioned and held in a static position by a comfy sofa or La-Z-Boy. Muscles throughout their bodies were activated, tissues statically stretched. They shifted their posture often for comfort and balance.
In short, our ancestors rested, they enjoyed plenty of downtime, but they weren’t sedentary in the way we modern humans are. Sedentary behavior is an individual health problem, a public health problem, and an economic problem. The cost of medical care and lost productivity due to overly sedentary modern lives reaches the tens of billions of dollars every year. Today I’m going to outline some of the specific ways being sedentary hurts us and what we can do about it.
Being Sedentary Increases Disease and Mortality Risk
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