Trendy standing desks don’t boost your health

THE promise of standing desks is that they get us to move more at work.

But, in fact, there is little evidence that they actually benefit our health, according to a report last month in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

It concluded that ‘sit-stand’ desks — which allow the user to adjust the height of their desks — only get the average worker out of their chair for roughly an hour a day, and this is too little to reverse the effects of a mostly sedentary lifestyle in the long term.

There were similar findings with other workplace interventions, such as treadmill desks or enforced walking breaks. These have been introduced after research suggested sedentary lifestyles add to the risk of developing illnesses including diabetes and cancer.