It’s been said that sitting is like the “new smoking” meaning being too seditary isn not good for your health. Yet for many of us sitting is what we need to do for most of our jobs. Standing desks seem like a great solution, you’re not just sitting there, but it might not be the best solution either.
There have been studies such as this one: The Relationship Between Occupational Standing and Sitting and Incident Heart Disease Over a 12-Year Period in Ontario, Canada that found “Occupations involving predominantly standing were associated with an approximately 2-fold risk of heart disease compared with occupations involving predominantly sitting.” So maybe standing all day isn’t the best solution.
The best advice keeps coming back to is more activity, take frequent breaks throughout the day, such as short walking breaks.
To get started on that, our own Healthy Workplace Working Group has one short break a week on Wednesday or Fridays, join us!
For more info and an excellent article on this subject here’s this: Are You Sitting Down? Standing Desks are Overrated. One note though, the article does mention that for some people standing desks do help alleviate back or neck pain, and for those that is the right solution.
