CITY WARTA, PALMERAH— Technology that continues to develop rapidly makes human life easier and more practical. We only need a few minutes to prepare food, have a smart refrigerator, and even have a mini computer in our pocket.
Various applications on our gadgets also make us feel like we are actively moving. We might use a fitness tracker application to make it easier to monitor the number of steps per day or remind us to come to the gym.
With all this sophistication, it turns out that the results obtained may not be commensurate. Instead of burning calories and increasing energy consumption, it turns out the nervous system can trick us by teaching our body to move in the most conservative way.
In research published in Current Biology, it is stated that our nervous system is an expert at making changes so that we only expend a small amount of energy during activities.
Scientists revealed this by studying energy consumption for walking, then applying it to various human movements.
“We found that people began to change the way they walked to save small amounts of energy,” said Max Donelan, a researcher from Canada.
What Donelan explains means that humans choose to do things in the easiest way. Modern humans choose to take the shortest route, sitting rather than standing, and so on. Scientists also found that laziness is also visible in activities we often do, such as walking.
“The nervous system monitors the energy we use and continually optimizes movement patterns so that we move as efficiently as possible,” he says.