Standing Desks Health Trend at Work May Be Futile

Needless to say, sitting long hours can be very bad for your health. It increases risk of numerous health problems such as diabetes, heart failure, obesity etc. However, a new study published this week says that standing desks, treadmill desks and many like these may not be a solution too.

"What we actually found is that most of it is, very much, just fashionable and not proven good for your health," health researcher Dr. Jos. Verbeek told NPR. Verbeek and his co-authors published their findings in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, after reviewing 20 studies on this subject matter. After examining these studies, they realized that most of them were either too small or poorly executed, leading them to believe that there is no conclusive proof that standing is better than sitting.

"The idea you should be standing four hours a day? There's no real evidence for that," he said. "I would say that there's evidence that standing can be bad for your health," in fact,

he mentioned about a study in 2005 that linked prolonged standing with enlargement of veins. The calories burnt while standing, as opposed to sitting, have been negligible.

Lucas Carr, behavioral professor who was not a part of the study holds a different view about the author's conclusion, stating that balance and moderation is essential for it to work.

 "The health benefits of standing are not well-known," Carr tells NPR. "But you're going to burn more calories standing than sitting. I know it's not a tremendous amount," he says, but "those calories every day over many years will add up."

However, the one thing that the two agree on, in Carr's words, "the state of the science is definitely early." Deeper studies are required before real evidence can support the use of standing desks against sitting.