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Switching From Sitting To Standing At Your Desk
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Chris Bowlby reports at BBC that medical research has been building up for a while now, suggesting constant sitting is harming our health — potentially causing cardiovascular problems or vulnerability to diabetes. Advocates of sit-stand desks say more standing would benefit not only health, but also workers' energy and creativity. Some big organizations and companies are beginning to look seriously at reducing 'prolonged sitting' among office workers. 'It's becoming more well known that long periods of sedentary behavior has an adverse effect on health,' says GE engineer Jonathan McGregor, 'so we're looking at bringing in standing desks.' The whole concept of sitting as the norm in workplaces is a recent innovation, points out Jeremy Myerson, professor of design at the Royal College of Art. 'If you look at the late 19th Century,' he says, Victorian clerks could stand at their desks and 'moved around a lot more'. 'It's possible to look back at the industrial office of the past 100 years or so as some kind of weird aberration in a 1,000-year continuum of work where we've always moved around.' What changed things in the 20th Century was 'Taylorism' — time and motion studies applied to office work. 'It's much easier to supervise and control people when they're sitting down,' says Myerson. What might finally change things is if the evidence becomes overwhelming, the health costs rise, and stopping employees from sitting too much becomes part of an employer's legal duty of care. 'If what we are creating are environments where people are not going to be terribly healthy and are suffering from diseases like cardiovascular disease and diabetes,' says Prof Alexi Marmot, a specialist on workplace design, 'it's highly unlikely the organization benefits in any way.'"
Not with my knees.
...when the main problem isn't really sitting down, but being STILL in the same position hour after hour.
Doing some full stride walking every day is the bees-nees!
Standing isn't going to give you anything more than sore feet.
And, it doesn't matter if you are moving much at all.
Sitting in almost all but perfectly designed, custom fit chairs has all kinds of direct physical effect on your body including circulatory and respiratory changes.
Here are only a very few of my sources:
Circulation in general: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2094039,
Blood pressure: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/70/4/533.full.pdf
Back problems: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9383867
The whole hierarchy of office chairs has always baffled me. You have three general classifications of chairs (and they're usually labelled as such at the store): Executive, Manager, and Secretary. The Secretary chair always sucks. It's the cheapest model, doesn't usually have arms, has thin or no padding, and it's flimsy. The Manager chair is the most comfortable. It's ergonomic, has adjustable armrests, lumber support, etc. The Executive chair, which should be the most luxurious, is almost always the most uncomfortable but it's always covered in slippery leather. Other than that, it's straight-backed, never high enough for the desk, and heavy.
It makes no sense that the degree of comfortableness that you are allowed to have is actually a class system in a modern office. I get that a business owner wants to control costs and expensive chairs are expensive. But wouldn't you want your employees to be as comfortable and healthy as your budget will allow? Why is a secretary less deserving of arm rests or lumber support than a manager?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Indeed. On the rare occasion I have to man a register at work, within an hour, my back is spasming, and my legs are stocking up and getting stiff. I can work all day out on the floor stocking, lifting heavy cases, kneeling, getting up, up and down ladders with no problem, but standing in one place for an hour is brutal. I suppose if I had to do it more my body would adapt to standing still eventually, but it would be a miserable transition.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
This should be extrapolated to the classroom. In particular, to boys in elementary and middle school.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Give me omnipotence and I'd be happy to take care of that for you.
Yeah, standing at the register all day was rough on my body at 16... I can't imagine how my [ahem] slightly older frame would deal with it. Back then I was a "stock boy" and was much more comfortable doing the manual labor than the standing-in-one-place routine of register duty.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You must also grow a mustache, otherwise it only changes your sitting-down-still problems to standing-up-still problems.
I switched to a standing desk last tuesday, and found my company supported the idea as part of our wellness initiative (I got free fruit for deciding to do it.) The first two days were kinda rough, but afterwards it just becomes a normal part of your day. What i was surprised to find was im way more refreshed at the end of the day, and find it a lot easier to communicate with people who are at my cube than if im sitting.
A few other coworkers do a 'part time' standing desk by elevating their normal work surface using cardboard boxes from the datacenter. im also told a stress relief mat helps make the transition a lot better. Either way, I dont see myself going back to a sitting desk anytime soon.
Good people go to bed earlier.
If our bodies are intelligently designed, it would be by Microsoft.
I switched to a standing desk about 12 months ago. I'm a pretty fit and active guy, but I have a variety of knee and back problems from years of martial arts training. Particularly, I have patellofemoral arthritis ("theatre knee") that gets worse when I keep my knee bent at 90 degrees or less. On a friend's advice, I built a standing desk and gave it a whirl.
The first two to three months sucked a lot. I could only stand for 1-2 hours at a time before my knees or feet were too sore to continue. I had to adjust the ergonomics of my workspace, particularly the height of my monitor, to avoid neck irritation. However, my lower back felt great for the first time in years. I kept going.
Somewhere around the 90 day mark, all my aches and pains vanished. My feet stopped getting sore. My knees no longer hurt. My back feels better than it did when I was 20. My hip flexors are more mobile. I can now on my feet all day with no problem. Standing around at parties doesn't make my feet or back sore. I also lost 5 lbs with no effort because of the increase caloric expenditure.
I'd recommend a standing desk to anyone with the willpower to make it through the transition. It's well worth it, in my opinion.
No, it's not okay because if they make me, if they, if they make me, me stand then I...I'll...I'll have to, I'll set the building on fire...
Worst. Signature. Ever.
Even completely small things are unhealthy for the human body. The human body is absolute garbage, and it's yet more proof that "intelligent design" never happened.
I don't believe in intelligent design either, but you are reaching waaaay too far up your rear when building criticism against ID. Saying the human body is absolute garbage is as dumb as saying God created the world in 7 days.
A person can buy a Maserati, but i said person doesn't change the oil and let water and particulate go into the gas tank, the car will turn into garbage. The car wasn't garbage. The owner was a careless fool at best (and a f*tard at worst.)
Human bodies are actually quite resilient, tuned by evolution to be cursorial predators. Capable of keep going under cold or heat in ways most animals would die. And that was already a fact before we eve invented clothing. Put the mind next to the body (which is what makes us human) then we have clothing, and a whole new set of capabilities emerge. There are plenty of historical footnotes of soldiers going on long after their horses, donkeys and oxen died of exposure.
We can survive bacteria, viruses and parasites and wounds. We die of infections beyond a certain magnitude, similarly to most other Eukaryote organisms. If our bodies are garbage, so are the bodies of all Eukaryote organisms. I guess the only Eukaryote whose body is not garbage is Superman, but he is an illegal alien from Krypton so he doesn't matter.
I do development and I work a standing desk (and for a couple of years did a walking desk when I worked at home). I'm actually vastly more comfortable not just at work now but in the rest of my life since switching:
- issues I had with sciatica went away
- I am in better shape/have more endurance & energy
- I sleep better
- I used to feel like shit if I went on a 10 hour coding binge (sluggish and exhausted) but now I just feel pretty much normal
It's only uncomfortable at first, but once you figure out good shoes to wear, good anti-fatigue mats to use and good posture it's much MUCH more comfortable (at least in my experience) and makes your non-work life better as well.
At my office we have 5 people in our engineering team (some IT, some developers) who use standing desks and a few more who are considering making the switch. The oldest stander is me (42) so it's not just something 20-somethings can do.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
I think you're over thinking this. Executive, Manager, and Secretary are just the names for styles of chairs, not some kind of hierarchy or (current) intended use.
Secretary chairs, I believe, are not named for the person currently known as an administrative assistant, but for the piece of furniture called a secretary. A secretary is a tall cabinet, the lower part is drawers, the upper part has glassed doors to display knick-knacks, china, whatever, and in between is a fold-down panel that makes a desk. This piece of furniture would be prominent in a house. When a person wanted to write a letter, etc, they would drag a small, lightweight stool to the secretary and fold down the desk.
In the days when most people worked in factories, the only person with a desk was the manager. Hence, a 'manager' chair is basically any desk chair.
The executive chair is mostly to show that the person sitting in it is important, hence the leather.
As someone who has been standing at a desk for the last 2+ years (programming), I can attest that a really good foam floor mat helps a lot. They make some specifically for standing desks that are quite comfortable. Standing on it in your socks actually feels pretty good. It does take a couple weeks to get used to standing most of the day.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
...and I've been doing it for over two years now. I used to experience back pain when I sat all day, but that went away after a month or so. I used to get sleepy after lunch when I sat all day... not so much anymore. You really do get used to it. A few suggestions for those who want to try it:
1) Make the switch the first day you get back from a longer holiday and are already out of your normal routine.
2) You *must* get a nice floor mat, preferably a dense memory foam mat designed for standing cubes. Working in your socks (if your employer will let you) while standing on said mat almost feels like a foot massage.
3) Another *must* - don't get a desk-height chair! At least, not for a while. You'll find yourself sitting way too often and never get adjusted to standing all day. Most of my fellow "standing" co-workers that have tall chairs sit at least 80% of the time.
4) It takes a couple weeks to get used to standing. Stick with it.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
"Capable of keep going under cold or heat in ways most animals would die"
Can't let you get away with that. My dog can go out when its below freezing quite happily. I need 2 layers of clothing plus a coat.
As for heat, yes , we're slightly better adapted due to being able to sweat but that comes with a price - huge water consumption. Not very useful in a desert. Mr Camel solved the problem far better.
"We can survive bacteria, viruses and parasites and wounds"
So can most animals otherwise the most complex life would still be a sponge. And to use my dog as an example again - he can happily drink water from streams and puddles that would put me on the toilet for 2 days.
Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in ID anymore than anyone with an IQ greater than their shoe size, but as far as comparisons to other animals goes, the human body in the raw is pretty feeble. Even compared to our nearest cousin chimpanzees we're pretty hopeless physically - our muscles and bones are much weaker and they can survive falls from heights that would easily kill a human.
Yep. The problem is the "work day" not the desks. It doesn't matter if you spend those hours sitting, standing, or switching between sitting and standing because you're going to be sitting or standing at the same desk, in a similar position (or in two positions) all day every day. .
I think we need to let go of the idea that jobs must be done from 9 - 5. Let people telecommute and get their work done whenever is best for them. A person can go biking, then sit in a park and do work one day; take a walk to starbucks and work from there the next; then spend the day playing with their kids and do their work at night, sitting in their bed. I don't understand why, despite the fact that technology makes this possible (and the fact that most hourly jobs can now be replaced with computers and/or machines, or are outsourced) we switched to treating salaried jobs the same as hourly jobs, where you get paid because you are there at your designated time rather than because you get your work done.
I'm 42 and I have been using a balance ball at my desk for 5 years. Love it; by its nature you are always doing small movements, posture is better, and my back problems have pretty much gone away. The pièce de résistance is that I can bounce on it to stay awake during boring conference calls.
The only times I have problems with it is when I am doing high-intensity focused work on the computer and start to lean and cheat support by leaning over desk and resting more of my arms on the desk.
Had a job that had conference rooms set up with hammocks in some rooms and couches in others so you could work from different posiitions. Seems healthier than just the focus on sitting or standing.
No, some parallel programming :)
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/25/...
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The Kruger Dunning explains most post on