Why Standing Desks Are Overrated
nytimes.com
Why Standing Desks Are Overrated
1–10 of 207 posts
Re: Why Standing Desks Are Overrated
#2The author's bigotry is showing in spades. I don't care if standing all day long is "associated with lower socioeconomic status". Standing makes me feel better, improves my posture, and takes away all the literal physical pains associated with sitting. If this makes me similar to a person working in retail, so be it. Am I supposed to be ashamed of our shared fundamental humanity too?
Re: Why Standing Desks Are Overrated
#3Best strategy is just drinking enough that you need to hit the restroom with reasonable frequency. You stay hydrated and get well-timed walking/headspace breaks. Win-win.
Re: Why Standing Desks Are Overrated
#4The author's bigotry is showing in spades. I don't care if standing all day long is "associated with lower socioeconomic status". Standing makes me feel better, improves my posture, and takes away all the literal physical pains associated with sitting. If this makes me similar to a person working in retail, so be it. Am I supposed to be ashamed of our shared fundamental humanity too?
socioeconomics shouldn't factor into this, only the wellbeing of the individual.
terrible journalism again.
Re: Why Standing Desks Are Overrated
#5Treadmill desks are superior.
Re: Why Standing Desks Are Overrated
#6I suspect people aren't going to read the entire article or are going to be put off by the rather aggressively-opinionated title.
I was expecting a more extreme conclusion than:
- Sitting all day isn't great, but just sitting won't kill you
- Standing all day isn't great, but just standing won't kill you
- Standing isn't exercise
- As long as you exercise and take breaks during the work day, it doesn't really matter if you sit or stand
Re: Why Standing Desks Are Overrated
#7Well, obviously it's not a replacement for exercise. Was anyone ever claiming that? Because I'd think it's fairly obvious that standing still doesn't exactly burn the calories off. The key is moderation, like with everything. Alternate between sitting and standing.
This past year I've started to get problems with my legs caused by sitting. Exercise relieves it, but the aches return when I sit down again. I just spend too much time sitting down (I work remotely as a programmer, and I'm also a musician). Swapping to alternating sitting/standing makes a big difference in this regard, and I had hoped to get a new desk 6 months ago, but due to house purchase trouble (and the fact my flat is too small to swap out this desk); I'm still stuck at my current desk. Hopefully it won't be too much longer now; I do worry what permanent damage is happening. Sit/stand desks have an added bonus of letting you adjust the height of the desk when sat down, which makes a big difference.
Chair choice is a big part of it. I do think pretty much all office chairs are designed wrong, in that they have a solid base and a cushion on top. Once you bottom-out (hurr) the cushion, you're sat on a hard surface, and that's most likely part of my issue. Aeron chairs are good in this regard, in that they're a suspended mesh with no hard surface underneath.
I quite like sitting on the floor as well, and I'm hoping to accommodate for that in my office design for my house. I think a wider variety of positions could only help to spread the strain.
Re: Why Standing Desks Are Overrated
#8This article is by a pediatrician, not a physical therapist or a subject matter expert. The article basically consists of the author pointing to some studies on the subject and concluding that there's not yet definitive, decisive evidence as to the long-term benefits of standing desks. Anyone who reads about standing desks knew that already. And, as someone who is known amongst friends and colleagues for using one, I've had numerous cases of people saying "Welp WhompingWindows, your standing desk is pointless, I saw a buzzfeed article about how a single study from North Dakota State said they're not great."
The title of this post and the the title of the article are not justified. The author's take-home in the final paragraph is that standing is not exercise, but standing desks may help those with back or neck pain and some people just prefer it. So, really, there's no evidence here to support the "Overrated" claim in the headline.
Like every post I see on standing desks, or anything with a controversial/contentious set of studies/proponents, each writer can select whichever set of studies from the vast array that conforms to their viewpoint. Those studies that disagree with the final conclusion? Better point out potential confounders, non-causal links, selection bias, etc. Drag out the usual methodological suspects to invalidate an opinion you don't agree with. It's easy to straw-man, though it's also easy to go to the discussion and just copy the authors' own assessment of their studys' weaknesses.
This happens all the time in science like epidemiology, you're not an epidemiologist if you haven't made a dozen complaints about an article's methods before considering its ramifications. Even Einstein - despite the evidence to the contrary, he could not accept some of the quantum-mechanical conclusions that his work helped bring about.
Re: Why Standing Desks Are Overrated
#9Interesting. I'm always a fan of research challenging wisdom, although I'm not sure who really thought standing alone was exercise. I've found greatly improved comfort with my standing desk at work and I want to upgrade my home desk once I move. I hope that the lack of evidence for specific health improvements doesn't encourage companies to stop offering the desks.
Re: Why Standing Desks Are Overrated
#10Zero-gravity desks and treadmill desks have both always seemed like more promising options to me.