With out query, inactivity is dangerous for us. Extended sitting is constantly linked to larger dangers of heart problems and dying. The apparent response to this frightful destiny is to not sit—transfer. Even a number of moments of train can have advantages, research counsel. However in our fashionable instances, sitting is difficult to keep away from, particularly on the workplace. This has led to a spread of methods to get ourselves up, together with the rise of standing desks. If it’s a must to be tethered to a desk, at the very least you are able to do it whereas in your ft, the considering goes.
Nonetheless, research on whether or not standing desks are helpful have been sparse and typically inconclusive. Moreover, extended standing can have its personal dangers, and information on work-related sitting has additionally been combined. Whereas the ultimate verdict on standing desks continues to be unclear, two research out this 12 months supply a number of the most nuanced proof but concerning the potential advantages and dangers of working in your ft.
Take a Seat
For years, research have pointed to standing desks enhancing markers for cardiovascular and metabolic well being, reminiscent of lipid ranges, insulin resistance, and arterial flow-mediated dilation (the flexibility of arteries to widen in response to elevated blood move). But it surely’s unclear how vital these enhancements are to averting dangerous well being outcomes, reminiscent of coronary heart assaults. One 2018 evaluation urged the advantages is perhaps minor.
And there are truthful causes to be skeptical about standing desks. For one, standing—like sitting—just isn’t shifting. If a scarcity of motion and train is the basis downside, standing nonetheless would not be an answer.
But, whereas sitting and standing can arguably be mixed into the only class of “stationary,” some researchers have argued that not all sitting is identical. In a 2018 place paper printed within the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medication, two well being consultants argued that the hyperlink between poor well being and sitting may come all the way down to the precise populations being examined and “the particular contribution” of “sitting time at residence, for instance, the ‘sofa potato impact.’”
The 2 researchers—emeritus professors David Rempel, previously on the College of California, San Francisco, and Niklas Krause, previously of UCLA—pointed to a number of research trying particularly at occupational sitting time and poor well being outcomes, which have arrived at combined outcomes. For example, a 2013 evaluation didn’t discover a hyperlink between sitting at work and heart problems. Although the examine did counsel a hyperlink to mortality, the hyperlink was solely amongst girls. There was additionally a 2015 examine on about 36,500 employees in Japan who have been adopted for a median of 10 years. That examine discovered that there was no hyperlink between mortality and sitting time amongst salaried employees, professionals, and individuals who labored at residence companies. Nonetheless, there was a hyperlink between mortality and sitting amongst individuals who labored in farming, forestry, and fishing industries.
Nonetheless, regardless of some murkiness within the specifics, newer research proceed to show up a hyperlink between whole extended sitting—wherever that sitting happens—and poor well being outcomes, notably heart problems. This has saved up curiosity in standing desks in workplaces, the place individuals do not all the time have the posh of frequent motion breaks. And this, in flip, has saved researchers on their toes to attempt to reply whether or not there’s any profit to standing desks.
