They’re all the rage in offices these days, but a new study suggests standing desks may actually increase bodily pain and slow down mental functioning.
Researchers from Curtin University in Western Australia observed 20 adults performing two hours of standing computer work to investigate changes in discomfort and cognitive function, muscle fatigue, movement, lower limb swelling and mental state.
They found discomfort “significantly” increased in all body areas and reaction time and mental state deteriorated, although creative problem solving improved.
“Due to concerns about excessive sedentary exposure for office workers, alternate work positions such as standing are being trialed,” the authors wrote in the study, published in the journal Ergonomics.
“However, prolonged standing may have health and productivity impacts, which this study assessed. The observed changes suggest replacing office work sitting with standing should be done with caution.”
Just this month, however, a study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology suggested switching standing for sitting for six hours per day could help people lose 5 pounds over the course of a year.
And in 2015, researchers from the University of Chester recommended office workers use standing desks to ensure they are on their feet for a minimum of two hours a day, with the goal of eventually increasing that to four hours.
Some researchers have even suggested standing could slow the aging process. According to a 2014 study, the less time a person spent sitting, the longer their telomeres — the protective caps which sit at the end of chromosomes. Short telomeres have been linked to premature aging, disease and early death.
While the negative health effects of prolonged sitting have been likened to the “new smoking” — a characterization now disputed by some experts — the conflicting messages show the science has not kept pace with the uptake of standing desks.
“Standing desks aren’t the silver bullet, they’re not the solution to everything, however, they can be part of the solution for many people,” said David Hall, occupational health chair at the Australian Physiotherapy Association.
Hall said the Curtin University study was “highly predictable.” “It’s not rocket science that someone who stands for two hours would get that sort of effect,” he said.
“We’re sort of facing two opposing problems in the health and well-being space. A lot of jobs have a predominance of sitting, and a lot have a predominance of standing [such as retail]. We advise people to mix those two in an intuitive, natural way, much like how we’d use our body on the weekend.
“The challenge in any workplace is to try and allow people to have a natural flow between sitting, standing and moving. What we know is you shouldn’t sit for longer than 30 minutes at a time, but similarly different types of issues start to kick in after standing for a long period.”
He said the two key points were it was “all about moving and changing posture” and that “too much of any one thing is a problem.”
“The cold, hard fact is sitting is shortening people’s lives and making them less healthy,” he said. “There’s so much research on that, we can’t walk away from that fact. Now, what do we do about it?”