The Price of Sedentary Life

The One Health approach takes accounts from experts in all areas of medicine to account for health of living beings around the world. When examining the price of being sedentary, the one health approach helps us to evaluate not only what it really means to be sedentary, but also the costs that go along with such a lifestyle. The way humans have evolved over the years have made life on Earth more dangerous for us as a species, as it relates to the possibility of disease.

In the past, humans were hunter-gatherers and were always on the move. Due to this fact, disease was never really able to catch up to them. In fact, since they were on the move always, it was almost as if they were outrunning the diseases. However, now humans have settled down into one area, they are no longer constantly on the move. Diseases are now running rampant as a result, and humans have been forced to evolve to combat this.

Population levels were kept low, as children had to be cared for during the constant movements. In addition to this, people weren’t surrounded by rotting meat or feces, so exposure to feces was limited. On top of all that, population groups were smaller too. This means that diseases that necessitate human to human contact were severely limited. Clearly, this was a better and safer time to exist in.

Eventually, humans and animals started living in the same spaces, even sharing the same water supply. Naturally, this event in history was bound to cause problems. These stagnant conditions allowed for new parasites to move in and take refuge: race, mice, ticks, etc. Humans became lazy on what they would choose for their sources of food, limiting themselves to only one or two items. Due to this lack in variety of diet, humans became deficient in what they needed in their bodies necessary to combat diseases.