Why standing desks are overrated
Warnings about sitting may be overblown
We know that physical activity is good for us and that being sedentary is not. Some have extrapolated this to mean that sitting, in general, is something to be avoided. Perhaps as a result, standing desks have become trendy and are promoted by some health officials as well as some countries.
Research, however, suggests that warnings about sitting at work are overblown and that standing desks are overrated as a way to improve health.
David Rempel, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who has written on this issue, said, “Wellmeaning safety professionals and some office furniture manufacturers are pushing sit-stand workstations as a way of improving cardiovascular health — but there is no scientific evidence to support this recommendation.
“Alternating standing and sitting while using a computer may be useful for some people with low back or neck pain,” he said — but people should not be under the illusion that they are getting exercise.
A number of studies have found a significant association between prolonged sitting time over a 24-hour period and increased risk for cardiovascular disease. A 2015 study followed more than 150,000 older adults — all of whom were healthy at the start of the study — for almost seven years on average. Researchers found that those who sat at least 12 hours a day had significantly higher mortality than those who sat for less than five hours per day.
A 2012 study in JAMA Internal Medicine followed more than 220,000 people for 2.8 years on average and found similar results. Prolonged sitting was associated with increased allcause mortality across sexes, ages and body mass index.
Another study from 2015, which followed more than 50,000 adults for more than three years, also found this relationship. But it found that context mattered. Prolonged sitting in certain situations — including when people were at work — did not have this same effect.
Why might that be? Sitting itself may not be the problem; it may be a marker for other risk factors. Unemployed or poorer people, who would also be more likely to have higher mortality, may be more likely to spend large amounts of time sitting at home. For some, sedentary time is a marker, not the cause, of bad outcomes.
One 2015 paper focused on workers age 50 to 74 in Japan, for more than 10 years on average per participant. It found that — among salaried workers, professionals and those in home businesses — there was no association between sitting at work and cardiovascular risk. A 2016 study examining Danish workers also failed to find a link.
A systematic review published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that there were many studies that identified associations with sitting at work and poor health outcomes. But when they focused on prospective studies — following groups of people forward over time — which might better confirm a causal link, they found that there was not really much evidence to support it.