WHAT SCIENCE SAYS ABOUT STANDING DESKS

March 11, 2020

You will find many standing desk articles claiming various benefits but are these benefits too good to be true? This article will break down the advantages most commonly attributed to standing desks and summarize studies and expert opinion on each one.

Commonly noted standing desk benefits:

Increased life expectancy

Claims that standing desks may increase life expectancy are often based on research about the health risks of sedentary behaviour. There is a body of research into the dangers of too much sitting and an international group of experts reviewed existing studies and put forth a series of recommendations in the British Journal of Medicine1. They recommend workers progress towards 4 hours per day of standing and light walking.

Another study2 found that replacing 30 minutes of sedentary behaviour in 50-85 year olds with light activity led to a 14% reduced risk of mortality. It also found replacing those 30 minutes with moderate to vigorous activity led to a 50% decrease in mortality risk.

Does that mean standing desks will extend your life? As you’ll see in the next section the human body is actually quite efficient when standing still. Likely, you’re getting less of a benefit than the 14% reduced risk from the previous study. That said, it does seem like it probably wouldn’t hurt and there may be added benefits of breaking up long sitting sessions or making you more likely to walk over to talk to someone or get a drink of water.

Increased life expectancy? Maybe… a little bit.

Weight loss

Will a standing desk peel away those pounds? Peter Smith, senior public health scientist from the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto explains it well. “If you were to stand instead of sit for an hour, you would burn 9 extra calories,” he says. “So you would need to stand for six hours more to burn off the energy from a slice of bread. And standing for that long will put you at risk for other conditions like heart disease.”

If you reach the recommended four hours of standing per day you’re burning a minor 36 extra calories. If you start to mix in light walking, you might be getting somewhere but just standing still isn’t going to make a big impact.

Weight loss? Not really.

Reduced back/neck pain

A study3 in 2018 of 48 office workers in Atlanta, half using standing desks and half using traditional desks, found 47% of standing desk users reported a decline in upper back, shoulder and neck discomfort.

Another study4 from 2009 with 60 male participants ages 18 to 35 found a significantly lower physical complaint score for participants using standing desks which was in accordance with previous similar investigations they had reviewed.

And a third study5 from 2011 called the Take-a-Stand Project in Minneapolis found a reduction in upper back and neck pain by 54%. It also found the removal of standing desks negated the observed improvements within 2 weeks.

Reduced back/neck pain? This claim appears to be true.

Better posture

Poor posture and slouching while sitting can be problematic. Standing desks do allow you to spend less time in a slouched position but standing to work doesn’t magically fix your standing posture.

Linda Miller, an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta with the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, noted “People will use a standing desk but they will still have very poor posture”

“The problem is, people will think they’re achieving good posture just by standing there, but we have to look at where the arms are, as well as where the upper part of the back and neck are.”

“People will try to stabilize themselves, so they’ll lock their knees or they’ll lock their hips. That creates even more stress on the joints.”

There is some evidence that standing can improve your sitting posture though. April Chambers, assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh stated “It seems alternating between sitting and standing, even if standing was only for a short period of time, improved posture while seated.”

Better posture? Not unless you’re intentionally working on it.

Improved flexibility

One of the many health issues caused by sitting is decreased flexibility and tight hips. Danny Johnson, a corrective exercise specialist and owner from a rehabilitation center in London described some of the issues “Tight hip flexors and tight hamstrings can bring the hips into an anterior pelvic tilt and cause back pain, putting pressure on and compressing the lumbar spine discs.”

Additionally he describes issues with tight glutes, another symptom of excessive sitting, can contribute to reduced hip rotation. “This decreases mobility of the hips and therefore forces other muscles down the chain to overwork (adductors, IT band, foot muscles, etc.)”

While standing means less time for those muscles to tighten up, you will typically need dedicated stretching to really see improvements in your flexibility.

Improved flexibility? It may help a little.

Increased productivity and focus

Research on productivity and standing desks is mixed. The previously noted Take-a-Stand study5 also asked participants how they felt about their productivity and focus. 71% of participants using standing desks felt more focused and 66% felt more productive.

Seven employees from ReadWrite decided to trial standing desks and track productivity based on the applications they were using. They found a 10% increase in productivity while standing and reported increased focus and energy levels.

A previously noted study4 from 2009 with 60 male participants ages 18 to 35 completing data entry tasks found their efficiency actually decreased marginally when using standing desks. This study also noted that previous studies on the immediate effect of standing while doing tasks indicated no evidence of dual-task cost on efficiency. Additionally, this study was too short term to determine if the benefits it noted of reduced physical complaints would compensate for the efficiency difference in the long term.

Another study6 of 45 undergraduate students hypothesized that cognitive performance would improve while standing in comparison to being seated or walking (treadmill). The results did not support the hypothesis and there was no detectable change in the performance of the participants.

Increased productivity and focus? Jury is still out.

More energy/better mood

87% of participants in the Take-a-Stand study5 reported feeling energized and 62% felt happier as a result of having a standing desk installed.

The participants of the one week ReadWrite trial also noted an increased focus and higher energy levels.

More energy/better mood? Limited research but it seems to work for some people.

Increased creativity

A study7 assessing potential productivity impacts of prolonged standing had twenty adult participants stand while doing computer work in a laboratory for two hours. The study found over two hours, physical discomfort increased, reaction time and mental state deteriorated but creative problem solving increased.

Countering this, anecdotal evidents from participants in the one week ReadWrite trial indicated they found sitting better for creative tasks.

The general concept of movement increasing creativity is supported in other studies. A study8 gave adults tests on creative divergent thinking and convergent thinking and compared the results while seated and walking. Walking was found to increase creativity in 81% of participants and convergent thinking in 23%.

Increased creativity? Not definitive but worth a try.

Lower blood sugar levels

Twenty-three overweight office worker were placed in a simulated office environment to perform typical tasks. They switched between seated and standing positions every 30 minutes. The study9 results indicated modest benefits for postprandial glucose responses (response to sugar after a meal).

Another study10 with 10 participants, 21-61 years old, in a real office environment, monitored blood glucose responses post-lunch. They found a 43% reduction in blood sugar spike while standing versus sitting.

Lower blood sugar levels? It can reduce blood sugar spikes.

Improved cardiovascular health

One of the ways in which sedentary behaviour lowers your life expectancy is through increased cardiovascular disease. A study11 of the risks of sedentary behaviour reviewed thirty-four studies with over a million unique participants. It found that the risk of cardiovascular disease related deaths correlated to the hours of daily sedentary time of the participant. There was a sharper increase after six or seven hours of total seated time and also after 3 or 4 hours of total TV time.

Standing may not be the silver bullet though. A study12 of 7,320 labor-market participants found that occupations that involved primarily standing were at twice the risk of heart disease than those which involved primarily sitting. That isn’t to say standing can’t be a positive part of your cardiovascular health as those whose workday involved a combination of sitting, standing and walking had a similar and slightly lower incidence of heart disease than just sitting.

Improved cardiovascular health? Uncertain, although standing all the time is actually a negative.

Summary

Overall, do studies support the claims made by standing desks? Standing desks are probably not going to help you lose weight, they won’t magically fix your posture and their benefit to life expectancy and cardiovascular health appears to be limited.

The strongest reason to try a standing desk based on the evidence is for back or neck pain where the benefits seem clear. Improvements in managing blood sugar spikes also appear to be a legitimate advantage.

Improving flexibility, productivity, energy and creativity are all more uncertain but plausible. The extent to which these are true may be more dependent on the individual and how they interact with a sit-stand workstation.

Citations

  1. Buckley JP, Hedge A, Yates T, et al. The sedentary office: an expert statement on the growing case for change towards better health and productivity. Br J Sports Med. 2015;49(21):1357-62.

  2. Schmid D, Ricci C, Baumeister SE, Leitzmann MF. Replacing Sedentary Time with Physical Activity in Relation to Mortality. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2016;48(7):1312-9.

  3. Garland, E., Watts, A., Doucette, J., Foley, M., Senerat, A. and Sanchez, S. (2018), “Stand Up to Work: assessing the health impact of adjustable workstations”, International Journal of Workplace Health Management, Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 85-95.

  4. Husemann B, Von mach CY, Borsotto D, Zepf KI, Scharnbacher J. Comparisons of musculoskeletal complaints and data entry between a sitting and a sit-stand workstation paradigm. Hum Factors. 2009;51(3):310-20.

  5. Pronk NP, Katz AS, Lowry M, Payfer JR. Reducing Occupational Sitting Time and Improving Worker Health: The Take-a-Stand Project, 2011. Prev Chronic Dis 2012;9:110323.

  6. Bantoft C, Summers MJ, Tranent PJ, Palmer MA, Cooley PD, Pedersen SJ. Effect of Standing or Walking at a Workstation on Cognitive Function: A Randomized Counterbalanced Trial. Hum Factors. 2016;58(1):140-9.

  7. Baker R, Coenen P, Howie E, Lee J, Williamson A, Straker L. A detailed description of the short-term musculoskeletal and cognitive effects of prolonged standing for office computer work. Ergonomics. 2018;61(7):877-890.

  8. Oppezzo, M., & Schwartz, D. L. (2014). Give your ideas some legs: The positive effect of walking on creative thinking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(4), 1142–1152.

  9. Thorp AA, Kingwell BA, Sethi P, Hammond L, Owen N, Dunstan DW. Alternating bouts of sitting and standing attenuate postprandial glucose responses. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2014;46(11):2053-61.

  10. Buckley JP, Mellor DD, Morris M, Joseph F. Standing-based office work shows encouraging signs of attenuating post-prandial glycaemic excursion. Occup Environ Med. 2014;71(2):109-11.

  11. Patterson R, Mcnamara E, Tainio M, et al. Sedentary behaviour and risk of all-cause, cardiovascular and cancer mortality, and incident type 2 diabetes: a systematic review and dose response meta-analysis. Eur J Epidemiol. 2018;33(9):811-829.

  12. Smith P, Ma H, Glazier RH, Gilbert-ouimet M, Mustard C. The Relationship Between Occupational Standing and Sitting and Incident Heart Disease Over a 12-Year Period in Ontario, Canada. Am J Epidemiol. 2018;187(1):27-33.

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