“Sitting is the new smoking,” according to office ergonomics experts and back-health specialists.
With people now spending their eight, work-a-day hours inert and seated, usually in front of computer terminals, many are now clamouring for the opportunity to shift their postures.
Desks with heights that adjust up and down, from sitting to a standing height, are hugely popular. BusinessWeek reported that one manufacturer’s sales of standup desks are growing four times as fast as sales of regular desks.
Not only are people asking for the chance to stand at work, but health specialists are encouraging them to stretch, shift positions, even walk around a bit during their days.
So, “Sitting is the new smoking” has become a mantra of health-conscious folk, one that quickly surfaces online with a simple Google search.
To be clear, siting doesn’t offend those in hapless proximity as does tobacco smoke. But it is becoming recognized as an activity associated with poor health. So it’s open to the same disapproval as fatty foods, for example.
“Standing is a lot better for you than just sitting,” said Steve Nagy, owner of Graphic Office of Central Saanich and Nanaimo. “It’s mostly around health.”
“You can do as much standing as you can sitting,” Nagy said. “It’s just another posture.”
He said today, when outfitting a new office, as many as 80 per cent of business customers are demanding height-adjustable desks. When desk height is raised to standing height, everything at the work station rises too, papers, telephone, computer monitor and keyboard.
Nagy said not only is it better for posture and back comfort to stand, occasionally it’s also better for communication between co-workers.
Imagine sitting at a computer screen and explaining to a standing but hunched-over colleague. Now consider you are explaining yourself and pointing to a screen situated at an eye-level height you and your colleague can share. It’s easier.
“If you want to have a discussion, it’s much nicer to have both standing in front of the same computer than it is to have one person standing and one person sitting,” Nagy said.
Craig Bentham, a chiropractor from Backfit Clinic, said the move to work stations with the capacity to accommodate standing up is really a return to postures favoured by evolution.
“Back in the day, if you didn’t move, you got eaten,” said Bentham. “But now we are a very sedentary animal compared to our ancestors.”
“The average person now sits 33 years of their life,” he said. “We make our living by sitting and not moving.”
So Bentham sees the discussion over work-station posture not as one of just sitting versus standing. He sees the key as providing the ability to easily adjust the height of a work station and so to shift posture easily, from sitting to standing and back to sitting.
“Standing is better than sitting, but standing in one spot for hours on end is not that great, either,” he said.
“The most important thing about a standup desk is that it has the capacity to easily go from sitting to standing and from standing to sitting,” Bentham said. “It’s to have that versatility.”
He said sitting, especially for long periods of time, puts too much sustained pressure on the lower portions of the back, leading to pains and sustained aches. It’s far better for a person to move, even if it only means standing up for a few minutes every half hour or so.
“The name of the game should be movement, throughout your day, that’s the key,” Bentham said. “We were never designed to sit and we were never designed to be stationary.”
“We were designed to move and then rest,” he said.
So, Bentham advises clients to move a little during their days. Shift the posture in the chair. If you have a desk or work station that adjusts for height, change it every half hour.
Also, if you have the standing option, don’t be afraid to stretch a little, or march on the spot. The point is to move the legs and get some blood flowing a little quicker through the lower half of your body. These days, nobody will look askance.
“Sitting is the new smoking today because it’s part of a sedentary lifestyle,” said Bentham. “It’s why the standup desks are so popular now, it’s because people end up moving around more when they are standing.”
The one area where standup desks might be most beneficial is the one area that has little hope of getting them: schools.
Nagy said he has done some investigation and found school boards have almost no money for better desks. Meanwhile, physiotherapists like Bentham and others say they are seeing some acute back problems with young people.
Sandy Wilson, physiotherapist at Arbutus Physiotherapy and Health Centre, said younger kids are at least given frequent breaks to move around.
But Wilson said she is treating high school, university and college students with some severe back issues.
“In university settings, you are dealing with lecture halls and they have those really small desks and seats with those flip-out things for writing on,” she said. “They are the worst.”
Wilson said she finds herself routinely advising university students to get up during a lecture, to go stand at the back of the class.
“Just do part of the lecture standing and part of it sitting,” said Wilson. “I just tell people: ‘Give yourself the option of sitting and standing throughout your lecture or class.’”
She also cautioned it’s always sensible to be realistic. Everybody has to sit at some point during their days for a few hours. It might be at work, lectures, appointments or even cinemas or theatres. But if it’s possible, mix things up a little, from standing to sitting to moving around a few paces.
“It doesn’t have to be a long period of time but see if you can stand up every so often for 30 seconds or a minute,” said Wilson.
“That will make a huge difference at the end of the day versus just sitting for four hours, taking a lunch break and then sitting for another four hours,” she said.
“It’s better to take small breaks throughout the day, just to change your position,” Wilson said.
