Cornell Ergonomics Web finds standing desks present their own issues

<i>&#62; In our field studies of sit-stand workstations we have found little evidence of widespread benefits and users only stand for very short-periods (15 minutes or less total per day). Other studies have found that the use of sit-stand stations rapidly declines so that after 1 month a majority of people are sitting all the time.</i><p>So sit-stand desks are a bad solution because people don't actually use them? What's wrong with this logic?<p>Of course when they are a novelty, people will try them out and then fall back into old habits.<p>Here in Denmark practically every office worker in every workplace has a sit-stand desk, and so I have many years of experience observing this. About ten percent (my rough estimate) actually use them, but those that do use them a lot, and stand between 25-50% of the time.<p>I would not work anywhere without one, simple as that. I even got one for my home office (they are available from many dealers here).

I don't get it: the actual study (which they even link to) appears to draw the exact opposite conclusion:<p><a href="http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/Pub/HFlabReports/EHARep0904.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/Pub/HFlabReports/EHARep0904.pd...</a><p>See page 29 especially, and the graphs starting on page 19.

Even if the claim that the risk of carotid atherosclerosis is nine times higher among people who stand more (which is dubious [1]), looking at overall risk of death makes more sense.<p>""" Time spent sitting and physical activity were queried by questionnaire on 53,440 men and 69,776 women who were disease free at enrollment. The authors identified 11,307 deaths in men and 7,923 deaths in women during the 14-year follow-up. After adjustment for smoking, body mass index, and other factors, time spent sitting (≥6 vs. &#60;3 hours/day) was associated with mortality in both women (relative risk = 1.34, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.25, 1.44) and men (relative risk = 1.17, 95% CI: 1.11, 1.24). """<p><a href="http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/172/4/419.abstract" rel="nofollow">http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/172/4/419.abstract</a><p>[1] below: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2995821" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2995821</a>

I dislike it when articles make bizarre statements and take it for granted that the audience should accept it. Like:<p><i>But, standing to work has long known to be problematic, it is more tiring, it dramatically increases the risks of carotid atherosclerosis (ninefold) because of the additional load on the circulatory system, and it also increases the risks of varicose veins, so standing all day is unhealthy.</i><p>Where do they get that?? Citations, please! It took me a bit to find all the background research and read up on it. Interesting stuff.<p>That being said, still prefer the standing desk. My standing desk at home is right by my bed, so it's really easy to fall back and change my position when needed, and I'm worried about carotid atherosclerosis or varicose veins. :)<p>See also what the book 59 has to say about lying down and creativity. :)<p>Some background info I found for anyone more interested in this.<p><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/inspiringlife/are-you-an-accidental-athlete" rel="nofollow">http://www.slideshare.net/inspiringlife/are-you-an-accidenta...</a><p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10901115" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10901115</a>

Atkins diets and standing desks aren't going to fix more fundamental issues with a pervasively unhealthy culture.

I highly recommend kneeling chairs. You sit with your legs underneath you instead of in front of you, which puts your back at a much more natural angle (much like standing, actually) than a standard office chair. They're cheap (mine was $75) and very compact, so you can augment them with a "normaller" chair. Long hours in a kneeling chair can strain certain muscles (the small of my back gets a little tight), so I do recommend using a standard chair about %20 of the time.<p>I alternate between a cheap office chair and a cheap kneeling chair (something like this - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Boss-Office-Products-Ergonomic-Kneeling/product-reviews/B00429Q38I/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&#38;showViewpoints=1&#38;sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Boss-Office-Products-Ergonomic-Kneelin...</a>), switching if I feel any twinge of discomfort, and my back and neck feel great.

The advice here is to sit for 20-30 minutes at a time and then take a 2-minute walking break. This sort of schedule happens to correspond nicely with the Pomodoro Technique, which suggests 25 minutes of work followed by 5-minute breaks.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique</a>

Ask any professional chef and they'll tell you about the long-term consequences of standing all day at work. Varicose veins are disgusting and unhealthy.

&#62; The problem with standing is that when you raise desk height for keyboard/mouse use you need to also raise screen height above the desk or you get neck flexion. Also, for standing computer work the computer fixes the person’s posture there is greater wrist extension and pretty soon people end up leaning which also compromises their wrist posture, thereby increasing the risks of a musculoskeletal disorder like carpal tunnel syndrome.<p>I don't understand this. In a proper sit-and-stand configuration the torso, arms and head ought to be in almost exactly the same position relative to the monitor, keyboard and table whether the user is sitting or standing, no?

What this tells me is that the perfect work environment is a Catholic Mass.

Many moons ago, my engineering school had classrooms full of wooden drafting tables (not unlike this: <a href="http://www.plotter-printers.com/oak-drafting-tables-2/" rel="nofollow">http://www.plotter-printers.com/oak-drafting-tables-2/</a> ). I cannot find online a picture similar to the wooden stools we had: tall, square seat slightly tilted forward at perhaps a 15 degree angle, cross-bars usable as foot-rests.<p>(Later, of course, "progress" occurred and the furniture was replaced with plastic chairs and tables.)

I was wondering about this. I've been trialing a standing desk - the best part is if you are thinking about a problem you tend to walk, where as if you're sitting down you just tilt your head to the side.<p>But after 4 hours or so I find I get a sore back. I've been "mixin it up"... standing for an hour, sitting for a couple of hours. Or sitting in the morning, standing after lunch... so far it feels pretty good, but I'm keeping some (quite subjective) stats to check out how it goes in the longer term.

"about every 20-30 minutes take a posture break and move for a couple of minutes"<p>Sounds like an unintentional endorsement for the Pomodoro technique. Just get up on your break.

Sit down, do your work, drink a lot of water, walk to the bathroom.<p>Or maybe I just have the bladder of an 8 year old boy?

Everyone seems to use a standing desk to <i>stand</i>, I use a standing desk to <i>walk</i>. Standing still will definitely murder my back, while walking feels comfortable and natural. Long term effects might be bad, but sitting down just feels uncomfortable after a while, even on very good ergonomic chairs.

I wonder if they considered at all the effects of lying down?<p>When I work from home, I love being able to take lie flat on the floor for a bit and rest my back AND legs for a short period.

Another cue to place my twitter bot: <a href="http://twitter.com/officeworkout" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.com/officeworkout</a> - tweets an exercise every 30 minutes.

<i>In our field studies of sit-stand workstations we have found little evidence of widespread benefits and users only stand for very short-periods (15 minutes or less total per day). Other studies have found that the use of sit-stand stations rapidly declines so that after 1 month a majority of people are sitting all the time.</i><p>While this contradict my personal experience, I do trust the studies.<p><i>every 20 minutes stand for 2 minutes AND MOVE</i><p>I also believe this will no more work than sit-stand workstations. <i>Every</i> 20 minutes, walk to the water fountain or somewhere else for 2 minutes, will turn any large office into a non-stop walkathon. And just like people end up sitting all day with sit-stand desks, people will end up sitting all day with this setup.<p>I suppose employers could hardwire a loud buzzer to go off every 20 minutes, but I just don't see that happening on any large scale.<p>Personally I already stand for most of the day, two years after I switched to a sit-stand desk. But I could change from sitting to standing and back every 20 minutes without losing flow. I am not sure I could do it if I had to walk away form the keyboard, even just for 2 minutes. After the third or forth break, I'm guessing I would be out of the zone.

This intuitively makes sense. A lot of you are noting that a sedentary office environment is foreign to a species that has spent most of it time - prior to the last several thousand years - moving in search of food, and use that to critique the article. But I don't see how standing stationarily in one place is any less foreign to the human experience.<p>While standing might help work additional core muscles, it is not working large leg muscles that are crucial to circulation at the same time that it's increasing stress to the circulatory system.<p>(For those that don't know, muscle movement is important to the return of blood to the heart (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venous_return_curve" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venous_return_curve</a>) in addition to lymphatic circulation (your _other_ circulatory system - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lymph#Lymphatic_circulation" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lymph#Lymphatic_circulation</a>) )<p>I could see persistent standing w/o movement stressing arteries because of greater hydrostatic pressure in your legs and increased load on the left ventricle of the heart.

tl;dr Sit to do computer work. Sit using a height-adjustable, downward titling keyboard tray for the best work posture, then every 20 minutes stand for 2 minutes AND MOVE. The absolute time isn’t critical but about every 20-30 minutes take a posture break and move for a couple of minutes.

This study should be taken as an experiment. If those participants had been building up and down for years on end the results would show differently. When I first started to sit then stand, yes tired more easily. But then as years progressed, my own personal hampster wheel exists anywhere and everywhere. The point should be: MOVE YOUR BODY A BALANCED PORTION OF TIME. Personally, when on silly long cycles, I sit stand work dance, building every way. If the beats not cranking, it's a posture focus war from looking down, typically the screen is fixed as I'm either looking slightly up or down at it.

Everyone always over thinks it with the whole sit-stand desk. All you need to do is buy a standing desk (I simply adjusted my cubicle) and a tall chair. No adjustment required, sit when you want and stand when you want.

I'm looking into getting an inversion table. Has anyone used one of these? all the studies have been on people who already have problems such as ruptured or herniated discs.

Obviously, replacing a sitting desk with a standing desk is not the answer. The answer is (surprise! surprise!) do pauses after each hour and take 10-15 min. active recreation. Exactly the same as it was in a school or college. It is not about sitting or standing still all day long, it is all about moving!<p>Most of really good ideas have been discovered long long ago. ^_^

Anterior pelvic tilt is caused by tight hamstrings and weak posture muscles which are side effects of sitting all day. Weighted barbell squats fix this problem more effectively than anything else I know of. Walking is important, but a strong core is probably even more important for long term back health.

Its a shame they didn't discuss walking beyond "it makes it difficult to type". Question: if I can figure out how to type while walking, will that give me the benefits of standing while avoiding the negatives?

That was expected, due to Nosilverbullet's law...

I never quite understood the appeal of standing up all day. Having done a couple of jobs in my youth which involved standing up all day and spending 2 hours a day on a train standing up, I couldn't think of anything less appealing.<p>I love my Aeron and so does my arse.

<p><pre><code> Standing in not accepted risk factor for carotid atherosclerosis. There is no shortage of research about the dangers of sitting including obesity which is a risk factor of symptomatic carotid atherosclerosis. Varicose veins wile not very attractive are not considered a serious health problem and are treatable I would invite the author to quantify the desks with peer reviewed research. The only link was to a 32 person self survey. Not exactly the most reliable form of research. </code></pre> I would also like to note this is not a peer reviewed article ones does the man have a medical degree and is not qualified to give medical advice. Not staying in one position sitting or standing and increasing your activity level is sound advice. I find the claims that standing is dangerous are surprising and are against everything I learned or read about accepted medical recommendations.