5 ms·
Last I checked, there's no conclusive evidence showing a standing desk has any health benefits over sitting. Treadmill desks, on the other hand...
by siodine 14y ago
Last I checked, there's no conclusive evidence showing a standing desk has any health benefits over sitting. Treadmill desks, on the other hand...
- rcgs 14y agoI'm not sure about the health benefits, but it certainly helps your posture.
- richardw 14y agoThere have been a few articles linking sitting to shortened life lately. E.g.: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/sitting-2-years-life-epidemiologist-finds-correlation-sitting-a-shorter-lifespan-article-1.1112285 http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/sitting-2-years... And a year ago: "The study found that women who sit for more than six hours a day were about 40 percent more likely to die during the study than women who sat fewer than three hours per day." http://www.healthkicker.com/751136264/sitting-for-hours-may-result-in-a-shorter-life/ http://www.healthkicker.com/751136264/sitting-for-hours-may-...
- siodine 14y agoYes, but there are similar problems with standing. http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/CUESitStand.html# http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/CUESitStand.html# http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/16/AR2010101602903.html?hpid=topnews http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10...
- vwoolf 14y agoI think this is why people who pay attention this sort of stuff want sit/stand desks, like Geek Desks, or something like the OP, who I think wants to be able to stand sometimes and sit sometimes.
- tptacek 14y agoThis comes up a lot. It seems like a worst-of-both-worlds solution. Prolonged sitting has been shown to disrupt fat metabolism. Prolonged standing is associated with a ninefold increase in carotid atherosclerosis. Even if sitting half the time leaves me with only a doubled exposure to atherosclerosis: that's not a win! I've got a timer on my iPhone, two different spots in the office to sit (my desk and one of the couches in the lobby), and no weird gadgets; the Cornell page seems to suggest that this is pretty optional, and I dont' have to pronounce any weird Ikea furniture names to describe it. :)
- siodine 14y agoYup, this seems to be the best solution, and surprisingly makes the laptop the best workstation. You get to change your workspace every 30 minutes to an hour with ease. And virtual desktops + remoting into more powerful computers mitigates the problems with a laptop.
- tptacek 14y agoI'm part of a small cluster of people here who don't like big monitors, because it makes working on the laptop screen harder when I don't have it (I get acclimated). Mobility is much more valuable to me than screen real estate.
- kimmiller 14y agoI'm not sure you can interpolate between the two situations. One of the potential reasons behind both of these is that being sedentary in any position is essentially bad (in one way or another - a PhD out of Australia whose name escapes me has done the research here). The body was built to move, giving extra options seems like a win and puts less stress on any one system (esp. musculo-skeletal).
- tptacek 14y agoThere is evidence in the opposite direction: http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/CUESitStand.html http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/CUESitStand.html Being stationary in either a sitting or standing position is bad. There are ways in which sitting is uniquely bad, but there are also ways in which standing is uniquely bad. Both are bad. The answer is: you need to walk around or in some other way incur gross motor exercise regularly, on the order of twice an hour or so. This has been one of 'tzs beats on HN for the past year; he's written some pretty detailed comments, try searching at the bottom of this page for [standing by:tzs].
- jquery 14y agoThat's... pretty alarming. I wish it had citations so we could evaluate how compelling the evidence is.
- tptacek 14y agoJust Google for [atherosclerosis standing]. This is well-studied, not because of ergonomics but because of correlations between heart disease and the occupations of people likely to develop heart disease.
- philfreo 14y agoYou definitely burn more calories per hour standing than sitting