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Comment by subsubzero | Hacker News Reader

I think its just a sedentary lifestyle with poor diet causing much of this. Almost all well paying jobs require you to sit motionless(well almost motionless - typing) in a chair 80% of the working day, couple that with fast food and cheap processed food everywhere, voila, you have a health crisis of obesity and low testosterone.

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It's too complex of a phenomenon to reduce to one, singular explanation.

However, increasingly sedentary lifestyles are definitely part of the problem. Jobs encourage people to sit motionless, of course, but most of our leisure time has been replaced by other motionless activities.

Global obesity rates have also been rising steadily while testosterone levels have trended downward. Obesity is well known to reduce testosterone levels.

There might be additional answers in environmental toxicities, but it's a mistake to ignore the elephant in the room: Lifestyle is a problem.

Well paid people have substantially lower obesity rates than poorly paid people.

They are normal weight but often very unfit.

They are on average more fit than poorer people.

Regardless of whether it's true, I don't see how this is relevant. The parent wasn't saying it's better to be poor, they're saying it's not helpful to not move. If you had a high paying, physically active job that you could do without injury, it would be better for you than any of the other combinations of pay ranking and level of activity. Likewise if the cultural ideal at the top was not decreased activity. If everyone had sedentary jobs and the cheapest food was the worst for you, you'd probably expect those with a surplus of money to be able to compensate better. Those without the need to compensate will be better off, but rich sedentary people will still need to.

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