Why is being sedentary so bad for your body?
In: 26
Many reasons. For one, exercise helps increase calorie expenditure which minimises weight gain that would lead to increased liklihood of cardiovascular diseases. Exercise also helps your body convert nutrients to energy more efficiently, as well as reducing risk of diabetes by helping to regulate insulin.
Another reason to get moving is to maintain muscle density. Lack of strong muscle leads to aches and pains in joints due to a bone structure that is not properly supported. It also leads to issues such as hernias and increases chances of injury when overexerting yourself.
Your body is sort of like a machine. Regular use keeps the machine in good working order. Your bones and muscles stay strong, your tendons and ligaments stay flexible. So if you don’t exercise or have regular physical activity then you become weak. Your body also more fuel in the form of calories the more it works. So if you’re sedentary you run the risk of storing excess calories in the form of fat. That fat and weight gain can cause significant health problems. So it’s best to stay physically active.
Because over the past few million years our bodies evolved to run, climb, jump, lift, throw, and fuck. Much like any machine, if you don’t keep up maintenance or take care of it, parts of the machine (joints, ligaments, muscles, etc.) will wear down and eventually tear or break. We’re made to move and if you’re only sitting at work to sit in your car to sit in your house to sit in your car to sit at work to sit in your car to sit at home, etc., you going against what your body is supposed to do.
your body is an incredible adaptable device, and to the extent it is able to will adapt to its circumstances… even so far as to adapt its adaptability.
when you are being sedentary, your body adapts to being sedentary and becomes better at it. muscle is expensive to maintain and uses more energy than fat to simply exist… so your body reduces muscle and increases fat.
as you adapt your adaptability to a sedentary lifestyle, it becomes harder to adapt the other way.
age causes loss of adaptability… as does adapting to adapt to being sedentary.
For starters, the lack of movement. We need to eat, but we also need to move/exercise. With the transition to working at a desk with no movement also came fast food. We do not move much, and the fastest and most convenient lunches became high calorie junk food.
We are animals. We’re supposed to live off the land, track and hunt. Share our bounty.
We’re past that and not adapting well
It really isn’t. But sick people often are sedentary, and people got the implication the wrong way round.
“Use it or lose it.” Basically, your body is a lazy jelly roll. If it isn’t pushed, it won’t maintain itself and will waste away into a blob. That was impossible for most of history, and we never evolved a way to just dump excess calories. So the fat piles on and the muscles waste away if not needed (need demonstrated through use).
Side note: Lymph, which has all sorts of protective properties, is exclusively pumped around the body with the contraction of muscles. Additionally, your bones gets stronger the more often they’re stressed (to the point of mechanical failure anyways). The phrase “use it or lose it” rings true.
It’s not that it’s bad for your body. In fact just the opposite.
It’s the ideal state of your body.
The implications of that are that your body stops working hard to maintain your body. Because it doesn’t have to.
As you body starts to age then your body hasn’t been working harder to maintain normal cellular bodily functions so it’s more susceptible to decreases in functioning.
A good analogy is that athletes that train at higher altitudes have a distinct advantage over athletes at lower altitudes. Because their bodies get used to doing the same things with less oxygen. So when they go to a lower altitude their bodies can do more because now they have more oxygen than what their bodies have trained with and can perform at a higher level.
When your body get’s used to having to function at higher stress levels it’s better at performing.
Latest Answers