Many women wonder why their legs and buttocks don’t look like those of the model shown above, even if they diet, avoid junk food, and exercise daily. So what’s the reason? Keep reading!
The gluteal muscles are one of the first muscles to atrophy with age. This is thought to result at least in part from a partial occlusion of capillaries (the smallest blood vessels) when a person is seated on a hard surface. Gluteal atrophy can be masked by fat. Gel cushions can distribute weight more evenly, reducing the chance of capillary occlusion. While gel cushions help somewhat, every one I’ve seen is too firm, whether it is intended for use on a chair or a bike seat.
I don’t know what sort of education it takes to become a seating engineer, but I’ll hazard a wild guess and speculate that none of those geniuses have been to medical school. Had they done that, or had they even thought about this matter from a common sense perspective, they’d know that most of their cushions, pads, and whatnot are too darn firm to have any hope of optimizing weight distribution, while others are so ridiculously soft that they may as well be made from cotton candy. I’ve often wondered if they design their products so their squishiness feels good when poked by a finger in a store, which is often the only presale investigation that consumers perform before buying an item.
Another mistake made by seating engineers is manufacturing cushions (pads, seats, etc.) whose firmness is uniform from the center to the edge. If asked to justify why they think that ease of manufacture is more important than a lifetime of seating comfort for their customers, they would likely reply that it is too difficult to vary the firmness. Nonsense. I developed an easy way to modify the items, making them more or less firm. In fact, my technique is so easy that you can do it at home. See this page if you want to find out more about it.
Unfortunately, poor seats are not confined to homes and workplaces. Automobile, snowmobile, motorcycle, personal watercraft (what people usually call “Jet-skis”), and tractor seats are often flawed, sometimes to an alarming degree. For example, I test drove a top-of-the-line Jeep Grand Cherokee a few years ago and found that its seats were so hard that my butt and posterior thighs would “go to sleep” after 90 minutes or so of driving, even though I can sit for 16 hours on a variety of crummy other seats and never experience those same unpleasant tingling sensations (a form of paresthesia; see #1 below for definition). Those paresthesias indicate nerve ischemia—in other words, the blood circulation to a nerve is impaired or totally cut off. Nerves are particularly susceptible to ischemia because they require a lot of glucose and oxygen to function normally. Those nutrients, and others, are supplied by the bloodstream. In addition to carrying nutrients to nerves and other tissues, the bloodstream also performs another vital function by removing waste products, such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid.
The person riding with me in the Jeep had no circulation problems, yet she also experienced the same discomfort. I was so disgusted by those seats that I investigated why a manufacturer would use such atrocious ones in their luxury vehicles. I was told that the arrogant German engineers liked firm seats, so they decided that everyone should have them. In other words, it’s my way or the highway. Is it any wonder that Chrysler is faltering?
I don’t mean to single out Chrysler, because plenty of other companies are equally inept. Perhaps those companies are giving less attention to the padding of their products now that people, especially in the United States, carry more of their own padding than ever. Incidentally, that extra blubber can substitute to a certain extent for product padding, making slim people somewhat more susceptible to nerve ischemia triggered by sitting on hard seats.
Perhaps you’re wondering, “Isn’t this nerve ischemia just a temporary problem?”
Yes and no. One short period of nerve ischemia—or even a thousand such periods—isn’t going to produce noticeable lasting damage in most people (it’s another story for people with inherently impaired circulation). However, the paresthesias accompanying nerve ischemia are really a canary in a coal mine (an early warning of danger). While nerves have a lower threshold for ringing the alarm bell, that doesn’t mean that other tissues are not affected by ischemia. Muscle cells don’t scream “I’m dying!” and fat/connective tissue cells don’t warn, “Here comes the cellulite!” but they experience the same pressure that nerves in the affected area are subjected to. Tissues function best when their blood supply isn’t compromised. Repeatedly choking it off—even partially—has detrimental long-term effects, not enough to bring you to an emergency department, but enough to accelerate tissue aging and degradation.
(1) Paresthesia = a generally unpleasant but not painful skin sensation, such as burning, prickling, tingling, or itching, that often occurs in the absence of an obvious physical cause (not obvious to laymen, that is, because doctors often know they can arise from the actions of various drugs and physical agents).