If you’re in an office job and standing up at your desk for the health benefits, you might want to sit back down. Many of the benefits touted for standing desks are little more than clever marketing, Finnish researchers have found.
Active work stations, which include standing desks and treadmills, have been promoted with claims of better posture and overall well-being. The active work stations grew in popularity after widely publicized studies about the dangers of being sedentary at work.
The Finnish researchers don’t dispute the problems with being desk-bound. But how much does an active work station help? Not much, the scientists concluded. To measure the effects of active work stations, they studied workers in the traditionally stationary job of software development.
Workers were monitored for stress, mental alertness and musculoskeletal strain. The team found only modest health improvements — standing workers had a heart rate increase of about four beats per minute and burned an extra six calories an hour. There was also a marginal drop in upper-body tension.
The standing workers showed no improvement in mental alertness. They had less strain in their necks and shoulders but more strain in their legs and feet. The heart rate and calorie-burning benefits should be weighed against an increased risk of lower-back problems and varicose veins.
Overall, the benefits of standing up were not as clear-cut as some makers of active work stations might suggest, the researchers said.
So, while everyone strives to be an outstanding worker, you may not get any healthier standing up.