Getting off your bum may cause cankles
Hello. My name is Helen and I am a sitting addict. I do it whenever I can. ‘‘Have a nice sit down’’, friends say, like a bunch of junkies, at my work which, like most British offices, is sitaholics HQ. We sit our way to an early death and we don’t seem to care. We are literally bad-asses. Sitting is the new smoking, say the experts, and I am on the equivalent of two packs a day: an eight-hour-aday girl whose pins-and-needles thighs are merging into the upholstery. Yet, with the latest recommendation from Public Health England to break up a sitting day with four hours of standing, comes new problems.
An entire industry supports those who want to give up smoking. For anyone who, like me, wants to quit the sitting habit, you’re on your own. Not only on your own, but conspicuously on your own, the lone stander at your office, like a meerkat at a urinal.
The science is new. How much sitting is too much? Confusingly, research shows too much standing is also detrimental, as any hairdresser will tell you. Is it a coincidence that the early adopters of standing desks are men in the tech industry?
I think not, because deskstanding requires two things. First, ugly footwear. I’m even talking Crocs. Second, a lack of self-consciousness. About two years ago I developed a sittingrelated – and nicely symbolic – pain in my arse. I tried stacking my keyboard on some books and standing. It helped, but I felt like a prat.
I asked Hidde van der Ploeg, a sitting researcher from the VU University Amsterdam, whether the old wives’ tales about standing are right.
‘‘Absolutely,’’ he said. ‘‘Standing for eight hours a day is not a good idea. We know it increases varicose veins and can be a problem for your neck and back. Moving is better than standing, but it’s not so feasible. So we’re aiming for a nice balance of sitting, standing and moving around.’’
Don’t stand cold turkey. Nicola Cairncross, founder of a digital marketing agency, rigged up her own standing desk two years ago. ‘‘I don’t stand for that long, maybe one to four hours a day,’’ she says.
‘‘I have in mind that my dad died of thrombosis, due to standing up all the time. He drove ships in the merchant navy, at the wheel for 12 hours a day.
‘‘So too, warns one of the most entertaining writers on the subject, Gwynn Guilford, a New York-based reporter. She chucked her chair, and a few weeks in was free of back pain, but ‘‘I noticed bulbs of pinkish flesh ballooning out over my shoes – cankles in other words.
I asked Guilford about her cankles. She warns: ‘‘Do not stand all day. That was very dumb of me. Cankle-avoidance is much easier now that I’ve created a sit-stand routine. I also drink lots of water so I trek to the rest room every hour, which keeps me moving. Oh, and exercises are helpful. I feel a little dorky when doing shoulder rolls and calf-raises and marching in place, but what can you do?’’
So most people who say they have a standing desk actually have a variable one and, according to the laws of human nature, are sitting more than they think or tell you. This leads on to the second problem. We are not yet sure if there is a maximum sitting or standing time.
I spoke to one of the leading lights of anti-sedentary research, Stuart Biddle, at Melbourne’s Victoria University.
‘‘We don’t know at this stage how much is too much,’’ says Biddle, who sits for less than four hours a day. ‘‘We know we need to sit less, but it’s a guess until more studies come in.’’
Van der Ploeg asked office workers to do a 1:2 ratio of standing to sitting. I point out that Public Health England is advocating a 1:1 split, but he says he had to be realistic. ‘‘If you cut down sitting by a third, that’s a very substantial gain,’’ he says. ‘‘We think that’s more feasible. Treadmill desks are better than standing, but they’re more expensive and harder to type at. Culturally, in most offices, standing is odd. And walking desks are odder still.’’
This is again backed up by the research. Humans are not just genetically lazy, we’re creatures of habit and conformity. In one study two groups of 15 office workers were given variable sit/stand desks. One group was also given in-office ‘‘standing’’ coaches and repeated exhortations from their bosses to stand as much as possible. Those with just the sit/ stand desks reduced their sitting by 33 minutes a day. Those who received management pressure to stand did 89 minutes less sitting.
Research shows, unsurprisingly, that the university-educated sit the most. Should we pay danger money to those whose jobs demand close focus? I read many online struggles of switching to standing desks, including this: ‘‘Harder to muffle your farts, since no chair is enclosing your buttocks.’’
Mikael Cho, the founder of Crew, a digital design agency in Canada, built his first standing desk ‘‘feeling like a proud new dad’’. Two weeks later he junked it. He found the effort of standing distracting: ‘‘When words are flowing, leg fatigue shouldn’t cut a writing session short.’’
But for all this talk of standing offices, van der Ploeg’s research found that in Australia 90 per cent of adult leisure time was spent sitting down, ‘‘and I wouldn’t be surprised if in the UK it was similar’’.
Socialising, driving, commuting, watching television, going to the cinema or football matches – it adds up to a lot of bums on seats. ‘‘There is a lot to gain here,’’ he says.