Harvard Neuroscientist: "If You Sit Like THIS, Watch Out! – It Destroys Your Body" | Dan Lieberman

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   We have been told that sitting is the new smoking over the last few years. What's your take on sitting?

2. DLDan Lieberman0:07

   Well, again, it's completely normal to sit, right? I mean, cows in the field sit. You know, moose sit. Chickens sit. Birds sit. Everybody sits. And, and humans are no different, right? And so when Dave Raichlen and Herman Pontzer and Brian Wood measured sitting among the Hadza, which are a population of hunter-gatherers that are, you know, the most studied because they're the easiest to study, they sit 10 hours a day. [laughs] Um, so the idea that, you know, sitting is this modern Western scourge is just not true. That said, there are important differences between how we evolved to sit and how people now sit today. Now, right now we're having this lengthy conversation, and I'm kind of glued to this chair. But, uh, so what we sit now in the West, we may sit long periods of time, but we tend to live... We also tend to sit for long, uninterrupted bouts.

3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:54

   Mm-hmm.

4. DLDan Lieberman0:55

   Hours at a time without getting up. But if you look at, at, um, at n- populations that don't have chairs, um, they, they interrupt their sitting bouts co- uh, constantly. They get up to tend the fire, to go pick up a kid, to do a little bit of this, to do a little bit of that. And so, so that's-

5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:13

   Is that always to do stuff, or is it sometimes because if you don't have a chair, you might be sitting in a-

6. DLDan Lieberman1:18

   Oh, absolutely

7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:18

   ... position that becomes uncomfortable after 20 minutes?

8. DLDan Lieberman1:21

   I think it's a combination of the two.

9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:22

   Yeah. Okay.

10. DLDan Lieberman1:23

    Exactly. So that's ... So, so, so they don't sit for long, uninterrupted bouts. That's one difference. And the other difference is that, um, um, they don't have... Like this chair I'm sitting in, I'm now leaning against the back, right? It's not... The chair has been designed to, you know, for ergonomically to have the, the least amount of work that my body's doing, right? And so that means that I'm not turning on a single muscle in my body now-

11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:46

    Yeah

12. DLDan Lieberman1:46

    ... except for I'm gesticulating and I'm using the, you know, my mouth, right? Uh, whereas, you know, the modern chair with a seat back didn't become common until the, the Industrial Revolution. Actually, the first mass-produced chair was produced in 1859, an important year for evolutionary biologists 'cause that's the year that The Origin of Species was published, right?

13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:07

    Wow.

14. DLDan Lieberman2:08

    And, uh, so, uh, uh, Thonet, a guy in Germany, produced the first... You know, the café chair with those bentwood?

15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:14

    Yeah.

16. DLDan Lieberman2:14

    That was the first industrialized chair. And now of course, chairs with backs are, are omnipresent. You go anywhere in the world and those plastic chairs are... You name it. You go anywhere on the planet, people have chairs, right? But that, this chair I'm sitting in and that you're sitting in, now we no longer have to use any back muscles-

17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:30

    Mm

18. DLDan Lieberman2:30

    ... to keep up our upper body. We're not squatting or sitting on the ground, so we're not using any of the muscles in our legs. And when you, when you... Even that little bit of muscle effort changes... Or, and also getting up every once in a while. So intermittent, you know, si- sitting for... You know, getting up every once in a while and also using chairs-

19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:48

    Ac- more active sitting positions.

20. DLDan Lieberman2:50

    Exactly. And also, you know, you're having to use your back to stabilize yourself or your quads or your hamstrings, et cetera-

21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:55

    Mm

22. DLDan Lieberman2:55

    ... to squat or sit on the ground. All of that's turning on your muscles. And you're not using a lot of energy, right? It's not gonna help you lose weight. But just turning on your muscles turns on all these genes, et cetera.

23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:04

    Yeah.

24. DLDan Lieberman3:05

    You're using up fat in your bloodstream. You're using up glucose in your bloodstream. You're doing all kinds of other things that makes that sitting much less harmful. So-

25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:13

    And I think for, for me, Dan, that, isn't that really the key take-home from your work, which is let's study these populations. Let's observe what they're doing. That can give us an insight into perhaps how we have evolved to live and move and eat [laughs] and all these other things. But we're not gonna go back to that world, most of us. So what can we learn from them and then apply in our modern urban environments? And so what, what, what came to mind as you were describing that is about three years ago or so, you know, we're in London at the moment, but in, in my own podcast studio I've got a, I don't know if you'd call it a chair. It's called a Moveman. And it's the best thing I ever bought because it's basically, there's no back to it. I think it's like one of those medicine balls but with a stable base essentially. So I'm sitting there, um, having these long two-hour conversations, and I feel, my back feels amazing at the end of it because if I have to const- my muscles are having to do something to keep myself upright.

26. DLDan Lieberman4:27

    Constantly. Exactly.

27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:28

    And I, I don't give it s- I don't, I don't have one for my guests. They've got an ergonomic chair.

28. DLDan Lieberman4:32

    [laughs]

29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:32

    Because I'm like, well, if they're not used to that, they may be going all over the place and not be on the mic, right? So I'm like, okay, well, I'll give them a normal chair or a really nice ergonomic chair. But that has been transformative. So, so we can learn from the research that you and your colleagues do and go, okay, well, could we have sitting positions that are less... It's not making them uncomfortable, 'cause who wants to sit at a desk in an uncomfortable way? But using, having to use your back muscles whilst you're sitting at your computer typing, well, even that would make a difference.

30. DLDan Lieberman5:04

    Sure. So I, I agree. I mean, that's, that's one of the reasons I'm interested in this. But I'm also interested in not just people like you and me, but I'm also interested and concerned about the transition that's going on around the world as people transition from being subsistence farmers to living in cities, and to help them not make the mistakes that-

Episode duration: 2:10:35