You probably have heard or saw the onlyne propaganda about the negative effects of sitting. Through phrases like sitting is the new smoking.
The average American sits on average 13 hours per day, out of 16 hours of being awake.
The amount of sitting we do increased exponentially with the addition of new technologies like cars, radio, television, computers, the Internet and video games. On top of that after the second world war most people transitioned from working on farms to factories and offices, work that is done sitting down.
So the average person's schedule looks something like this, wake up have breakfast, drive your car through rush hour traffic to your desk job where you are going to sit for eight uninterrupted hours, drive your car back home, have dinner and relax watching a movie or playing some video games before you fall asleep.
Sometimes attempts are made to offset this sedimentary life with exercise, however if you are going to compare movement with nutrition, it would be the equivalent of eating fast food for breakfast lunch and dinner and finish the day with a big vitamin pill and pretend that you are eating healthy.
It is not enough to make up for 13 hours of abuse, you would be a lot healthier if you wouldn't be sedimentary for so long and not do any exercise.
The position of sitting is a rather unnatural one that would be impossible to maintain without a chair.
At worst you would sit on the ground which is hard, dirty and full of insects.
Which would significantly shorten the duration of the time you spend sitting.
In third world country, where people are so poor that they don't even have furniture, the preferred resting position is squatting.
Because sitting for long periods of time is such a new phenomena our bodies are not well adapted to cope with such a stress.
One system that particularly struggle with it, is your muscular system.
Because it has to maintain your body in such an unnatural position, various muscular imbalances are going to occur.
This muscular adaptations allow you to function better in a sitting position, but deform and compromise your body performing any other tasks. Like standing and walking.
The muscles hold the bones in place, if a muscle shortens the position of the bones is going to change.
And this will deform your entire body, because everything is connected to everything else, and your body has to maintain equilibrium, one muscular imbalance is enough to deform the entire body.
Poor posture is not just an aesthetic problem or something that will maybe give you some mild joint pain when you get older.
The external deformation of a structure is going to prevent the good function of the internal mechanical and electrical system.
This is valid for any structure not just your body.
Think of it like this: if you get into a car crush where one of the car door is bent out of shape. That is not just an aesthetic problem, the function of that door is going to be affected: is not going to lock open or close, stay closed when you are driving etc.
So various disease are going to be caused, by thedeformation.