The perils of prolonged sitting have well been established. It can boost your chances of developing everything from heart disease to cancer and diabetes, and can even take years off your life. But theres one side effect that you may not have realized is linked to parking your tush in a desk chair all day.

Americans are sitting so long that their butts are literally falling asleep. Dead butt syndrome, or gluteal amnesia, is a condition that occurs when your gluteus medius gets inflamed and forgets to function normally.

Sitting too long can restrict the blood flow, causing gluteal amnesia, which can lead to hip pain, lower backache and problems with your ankles. The glutes will fail to fire properly even when performing exercises targeting the glutes, said Donovan Green , celebrity fitness trainer and author of No Excuses Fitness: The 30-Day Plan to Tone Your Body and Supercharge Your Health .

Kelly Starrett, a physical therapist and founder of Stand Up Kids , added that your glutes arent designed to bear weight for long periods. Spending so much time on your backside decreases your bodys ability to use your incredibly powerful gluteus muscles when theyre needed.

If you imagine making a panini sandwich where you take high pressure and high temperature and make a grilled cheese, sitting on your glutes all day is a little like this, Starrett said.

The sustained flexed position of the hip and the compression of the tissues sets us up for the perfect storm of shut[ting] down glute function, or in the vernacular of the people, dead butt, he added.

People experiencing dead butt syndrome may feel the familiar sensation of a body part falling asleep.

The technical term for this is paresthesia, an abnormal sensation felt in your body due to compression or irritation of nerves, said Mark Benden, director of the Ergonomics Center at Texas A&M University. He added that symptoms of paresthesia might vary from mild to severe and can be fleeting or long-lasting.

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