Are Standing Desks Really Good For You?
Standing desks have become all the rage in the workplace wellness world; you can’t go into a modern office without seeing one. Some employers provide them, and the majority of employers at least subsidize them. With the ability to work at a standing desk just one meeting with HR away, it makes you wonder, are standing desks good for you?
Often, people that sell these desks will tell you that standing instead of sitting will help you do everything from weight loss to cancer prevention. They want you to believe that using their standing desk will fix all of your aches and pains from working at a desk, and they attempt to demonize sitting to scare you into buying their products.
They’ll go as far as to tell you that “Sitting is the new smoking.” It isn’t.
Smoking and sitting are nothing alike. Smoking is a completely unnatural and slightly strange behavior. Sure we know tobacco, marijuana, and other substances are smokable, but you have to imagine how we gathered that information. It must have been trial and error. The first guy who started smoking surely got some weird looks from his cohorts.
Sitting, on the other hand, is entirely natural. If you get tired and need a break but aren’t going to sleep, what do you do? If you are hungry and want to eat, sitting is natural.
Sitting is the new smoking only in the sense that you cannot work at a place whose employees are forced to smoke all day long and expect to live as long as people who don’t.
No matter how you look at it, sitting in the same position for eight to ten hours is harmful to your body. The problem is not necessarily the sitting itself—it’s the prolonged time in any given position.
Staying in the same position for hours on end is bad for you, whether it is standing, sitting, or lying in bed. Humans are designed to move, and if they don’t move, the result is pain. Muscular pain, joint pain, and depression are all the result of inactivity. Inactivity is the real enemy, which begs the question, do standing desks really combat this foe?
Is a standing desk even good for you?
Overall, yes, a standing desk is good for you. Although it probably isn’t as good for you as you think and a standing desk can still leave you with just as many aches and pains as a regular desk.
To answer that question in detail, I thought it would be best to simply answer the most common questions I’ve received about standing desks during the past three years of working in the corporate wellness space.
Will a standing desk help you lose weight?
Not really, which makes it unfortunate that standing desks are often sold as a weight loss product for the office.
According to the Journal of Physical Activity and Health, you’ll only burn an average of 8 more calories per hour standing than sitting in a regular chair. To burn one pound of fat, you need to burn 3,500 calories from fat. Therefore to drop one pound of fat, you need to stand for 438 hours, which is 55 full workdays worth of standing.
Most standing desk users, I know, only stand for around two hours a day. At that rate, it would take you almost eight months to lose that one pound from the calories burned using a standing desk alone.
Can standing desks CAUSE back pain?
Absolutely, if you happen to push your hips forward when you stand, you will experience back pain within the first week. Standing still for hours on end can create a host of muscular issues, it can bother your feet, your hips, and your back.
To protect your lower back while standing, you’ll need to engage your glutes and your abs. To do this, imagine you are trying to hold a playing card in between your buttcheeks, and someone is going to punch you in the stomach. It works like a charm.
In addition to engaging your abs and glutes, you’ll need to change position regularly, stagger your stance, widen your stance, slightly bend your knees, and of course, sometimes sit back down.
Can a standing desk relieve back pain?
Yes! At first glance, this may seem to contradict the previous question, but I promise you it does not.
Standing desks are great for relieving the pain caused by sitting because you are transitioning to a new position. When you sit, your legs are not apart of the equation, your lower back and abs are holding all of your weight. Since your legs contain the strongest muscles in your body, standing is an excellent way to get them involved. Also, standing is a great way to decrease neck and upper back tightness, bringing a monitor up to your standing height allows you to more easily maintain good posture than when sitting.
Also, when you are standing, you can easily change positions. The more you change positions throughout the day, the more likely you will be pain-free.
What is a standing desk good for?
Where the standing desk shines, is helping you be productive, and stay active.
The standing desk helps you be productive because it is hard to doze off standing. It makes staying active easy: while standing, you can easily change positions and keep moving!
You can stand on one foot, stand on your toes, and adopt a variety of different stances to prevent pain caused by inactivity. You can also take some stretching postures while continuing to work. For instance, a high lunge or a side lunge are both positions that you can work in.
In addition to preventing pain, adopting stretching postures and balancing on one foot will help you build strength, albeit a tiny amount of strength but strength nonetheless.
Your feet will take some time to get used to the new standing time. I recommend a soft mat or fun terrain mat for your feet and wearing footwear that won’t bother you: ideally flat shoes, or supported gym shoes. Standing in dress shoes or anything with a heel is going to do more bad than good.
Should I buy a standing desk?
When it comes to the decision of whether or not to get a standing desk, the main factor for most people is a personal preference. Try one for an hour before purchasing one, it certainly isn’t for everyone, and you don’t want an expensive standing desk you never use. Here are the pros and cons; only you can decide if it is right for you.
PROS
Relieves back pain caused by sitting
Keeps you active
Helps with productivity
CONS
It won’t help you lose weight
It can cause aches and pains in your feet, hips, and low back
The price
I have a standing desk, which I use for about an hour a day. Most of the time, while working, I prefer to sit on an exercise ball instead of standing. They are both healthy alternatives to an office chair, and I find the exercise ball more fun. Having both options is the ideal situation if your space allows it.
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