Sitting down makes your backside bigger

If you happen to sit more often you are more likely to have a bigger bottom. Experts say that the pressure put on areas of the body used for sitting produces up to 50% more fat in those parts.

This can explain why couch potatoes and other sedentary behaviour makes you fat when combined with a lack of exercise. Even people with healthy diet and exercise habits will be affected if they spend long periods sitting behind a desk, The Telegraph reported Monday quoting researchers.

Researchers found that preadipocyte cells - the precursors to fat cells - turn into fat cells and produce even more fat when subject to prolonged periods of 'mechanical stretching loads' - the kind of weight we put on our body tissues when we sit or lie down.

Studying MRI images of the muscle tissue of patients paralysed by spinal cord injuries, researchers noticed that, over time, lines of fat cells were invading major muscles in the body.

This spurred an investigation into how mechanical load - the amount of force placed on a particular area occupied by cells - could be encouraging fat tissue to expand, according to the newspaper.

The research has been published in the American Journal of Physiology - Cell Physiology.