Standing Desks Could Actually Be Bad for You

Bad news for standing desk zealots: you may not be as superior to your seated counterparts as you think you are.

Researchers at the University of Sydney have found that standing desks may not reduce the risk of heart disease after all — they may actually increase circulatory issues like varicose veins.

These findings don’t, of course, mean that sitting all day is good for you, either, but they do highlight the importance of white-collar workers moving around throughout the day.

According to a new paper published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, both sitting all day and standing all day without changing it up seems to be pretty bad for you.

Using UK Biobank data gleaned from more than 83,000 patients who wore high-grade wearable monitors, the Sydney researchers found that for every extra 30 minutes standing after two hours, the risk of circulatory disease went up by a whopping 11 percent.

Standing also did not appear to decrease the risk of heart attacks or strokes either, which very much goes against the preachings of standing desk enthusiasts who insist that buying a tall $500 workstation will improve your health.

Rather than saying one is better than the other, the researchers looked into whether standing desks could help or hinder health. As they found, being still too long is bad for you regardless of whether you’re standing or sitting.

“The key takeaway is that standing for too long will not offset an otherwise sedentary lifestyle and could be risky for some people in terms of circulatory health,” explained University of Sydney medicine professor Matthew Ahmadi in a statement. “We found that standing more does not improve cardiovascular health over the long term and increases the risk of circulatory issues.”

Given the narrow scope of this research, there could well be other benefits to standing while you work — but the best intervention, per these Aussie researchers, is to simply get up and move around.

“For people who sit for long periods on a regular basis, including plenty of incidental movement throughout the day and structured exercise may be a better way to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease,” explained coauthor and wearables expert Emmanuel Stamatakis.

To paraphrase former president Barack Obama: if you like your standing desk, you can keep it — just don’t tell your friends and coworkers that they’re wrong for wanting to sit every once in a while.

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