Chapter 12: The Musculoskeletal System and the Sitting Disease
You sit for an average of 9.3 hours per day in a body that was built to walk, run, climb, squat, and throw. The result: 619 million people with lower back pain -- the world's leading disability.
◆ Key Insights
Lower back pain is now the #1 cause of disability globally, affecting 619 million people in 2020
200 million women worldwide suffer from osteoporosis -- a disease of insufficient mechanical loading, not aging
Your ancestors squatted with full hip flexion for hours daily; modern adults have lost this basic human resting position
Bones are living tissue that remodel in response to stress -- remove the stress and they weaken at any age
The chair is barely 150 years old as a universal fixture -- your skeleton has had zero generations to adapt
Read the full chapter to learn why sitting is the most destructive posture in human history -- and what your body expects instead.
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