Biological Consequences of the Modern Lifestyle

[wittwer]

One of the outcomes of the Modern Sedentary Lifestyle is the current increase in obesity that contributes to increased diabetes, high blood pressures, cardio-pulmonary dieseases, strokes, and heart attacks. But then, we are living longer and for all intents and purposes, have overcome infectous dieseases that took us out at earlier ages before these other conditions overwhelmed the body...

[The Horned God]

1. We don’t use our bodies as much as our ancestors did. We (the average Jill and George) spend most of the time sitting, whether we’re driving to work, at work, at home, or anywhere for that matter, we’re almost always sitting. If we do use our bodies, it’s usually in a sporadic and unnatural way i.e. weight-lifting, tread-mill, etc.

While the modern sedentary lifestyle of city dwellers probably involves less than optimum levels of exercise, I wouldn't view the lives of our ancestors with rose-tinted glasses either.

Their lives were often at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of exercise. They tended to suffer from diseases of over-use such as arthritis rather than of under-use such as obesity. Neither situation is Ideal. For instance, my own father is a farmer and he has quite bad arthritis in his shoulder from years of using a pitchfork, stacking bales etc.

There are several other farmers in the locality who have had similar and worse problems including requiring knee and hip replacements at relatively young ages (late 60's).


Our ancestors may have been fitter and healthier than we but they were not without their own particular health problems.

2. The food we eat is radically different from the food our ancestors ate. We eat a mush of chemically tainted food day in and day out.

The nadir of food health was in the 1950's, when white bread and jam, canned lunch meat, and TV dinners containing few vegetables were normal fare. At least nowadays most people know what it is they should be eating, even if not everyone actually does it.