Do you make the rockin’ world go ‘round?
November 2012
Just when you thought it was safe to leave your cubicle for a run to the vending machines and another bag of Chocolate Cheezies, this bit of news comes along: Desk Derriere is sweeping the office.
Research at Tel Aviv University shows that inactive people – folks who spend long working hours sitting at a desk staring at a computer screen, for instance – are developing fat bottoms. Since they’re not getting any exercise, their gluteus maximuses are becoming so big they look like gluteus hippopotamuses.
The study found that their butt muscles are actually breaking down and shrinking. As they deteriorate, thick layers of fat cells develop inside the atrophied tissue. The result: more tush – more tush mush.
A surprise? Probably not. You may well have suspected this already from observing other folks at the office, or even yourself.
And the news, actually, isn’t all that new. The Daily Mail of London reported the research a couple of weeks ago but the study was done in 2011, many months before. Maybe the researchers have been sitting on it, trying to think of a way to bare the results without offending folks who might think the whole thing is a bit cheeky.
I don’t know that there’s any way to back into it – after all, a fanny is a fanny, and a fatter fanny is a fatter fanny – so we’re just going to have to face it.
The Tel Aviv study, the Mail reported, showed that preadipocyte cells – the precursors to fat cells – made the supersize metamorphosis twice as fast as normal when they “were exposed to sustained mechanical loading” – that is, when somebody was sitting on them.
The study suggests that if you stack weight on your keister for a long time, “you are more like to store fat in your bottom,” the paper quoted Professor Amit Gefen, who supervised the research.
And while the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus are being immobilized by the load above, other muscles are being activated and even strained . “The hip flexor muscles, found at the front of the hip, become overactive and tight if an individual spends all day sitting,” physiology expert Chris Jones told the paper.
Added Anne Elliott, a lecturer at Middlesex University: “When the bottom and stomach muscles become weak and the hip flexor muscles become tight, Lower Crossed Syndrome can develop.” And what happens then? “Symptoms include lower back, knee or ankle pain and in some cases limited movement.”
Goodness gracious.
Get up. Walk. Now.
The problem is especially vexing for women, medical experts say, because females are more prone to storing extra fat in their bottoms and on their hips than men. So if anybody needs to get up and shake their booties, it’s the ladies.
The good news is there’s hope for everybody, regardless of gender. The bad news is that turning hope into reality involves exercise: getting off your duff and doing some laps around the parking lot, or taking the stairs – two at a time.
“Climbing the stairs, but walking two steps at a time, really engages the gluteal muscles,” says Cornel Chin, a personal trainer whose clients have included Leonardo DiCaprio.
If you can’t bring yourself to that, you can work out (sort of) at your desk. Chin’s advice: “Do 10 slow buttock squeezes followed by 10 squeezes that you hold for two seconds, and then 10 pulses (very quick squeezes).”
All the while hoping that nobody’s looking, I’d think.
Or you can say to heck with it, sit back with another candy bar and sing the immortal words of Queen, the 1970s glam rock group, as your life anthem: “Fat bottomed girls” – or guys – “you make the rockin’ world go ‘round.”