Your standing desk isn’t making you any healthier

Sitting for long hours is bad for our health. Standing up may not be much better, though.

A large new study of more than 83,000 adults found that standing for more than two hours a day — as many people with standing desks do — didn’t protect against the cardiovascular risks of too much sitting.

Those hours of standing also turned out to have their own downsides, increasing people’s likelihood of developing serious circulatory problems, including varicose veins, abnormally low blood pressure and blood clots, compared with people who rarely stood.

“Standing is generally better than sitting,” said Matthew N. Ahmadi, a research fellow at the University of Sydney in Australia, who led the new study. But, by itself, it’s not enough to make us healthier. “To improve your overall health and lower your risk of heart disease, you have to mix in actual movement,” he said.

In other words, to undo the health risks of sitting, a standing desk alone isn’t enough.

Lack of evidence behind standing desks

For decades, researchers have been telling us to sit less, with studies showing that long hours in a chair contribute to greater risks for heart disease, vascular problems, joint pain, diabetes, obesity and other conditions.

In theory, being upright should stave off this harm, since it’s the postural opposite of sitting. Public health authorities and employers have encouraged us to rise, standing desks have proliferated, and many of us now stand for three to four hours a day, according to recent epidemiological studies.

But surprisingly little credible science supports all this verticality, and some studies have raised doubts. A 2019 experiment, for instance, found that people who stood for an hour burned only nine calories more than if they’d stayed seated, suggesting standing won’t do much to ward off obesity.

Sitting’s most damaging impacts, though, are on the cardiovascular system, and while it seems plausible standing would lessen or reverse those effects, there hasn’t been much evidence. So, for the new study, published in October in the International Journal of Epidemiology, scientists at the University of Sydney and elsewhere pulled records of more than 83,000 men and women who’d joined the UK Biobank study.

These records included extensive information about everyone’s lifestyles, health and daily habits and how they’d moved throughout a typical day, based on a weeks’ worth of data from a wrist-worn activity tracker.

Using a sophisticated algorithm that analyzed these movement patterns, the researchers could then tell whether someone was sitting, standing or actually in motion during every waking minute of their days.

The researchers next checked medical databases in Britain to see whether these same people had died from or been hospitalized for a cardiovascular problem in the seven years or so after they’d joined the biobank. (All participants gave permission for this access.)

Finally, the scientists cross-checked movement patterns against medical outcomes, looking for links between people’s sitting and standing and serious heart conditions, such as heart disease, heart failure and stroke, or circulatory problems, including venous ulcers, varicose veins and blood clots.

Sitting and standing are both a problem

The links were there, especially for sitting. People who sat for more than 10 hours a day - which was, in fact, most people - were at least 13 percent more likely to have developed serious heart problems in the intervening years than people who sat less. They also had about a 26 percent higher risk for circulatory disorders.

Standing wasn’t much of a solution, though. If people stood for more than two hours a day, their risks of circulatory problems rose by at least 11 percent.

Standing for more than two hours a day didn’t increase risks for severe heart problems, compared with people who stood less. But it didn’t lower the risks, either. Perhaps most important, while the study didn’t directly compare the heart impacts of sitting vs. standing, “there was no improvement” in heart health associated with standing, Ahmadi said, “and most people probably want their health to get better.”

“What our research and other literature suggest is that both sitting and standing are part of the problem of physical inactivity,” said Emmanuel Stamatakis, a professor of physical activity, lifestyle and population health at the University of Sydney, who oversaw the new study.

Standing involves few muscular contractions, Stamatakis pointed out, and “muscular contraction is a necessary condition for any activity to maintain or improve health.”

Otherwise, as you stand still, blood flows through your legs sluggishly at best and often pools there, potentially contributing to circulatory disease. You also barely raise your heart rate, which is necessary to improve cardiovascular health.

Given all this, the supposed health benefits of standing over sitting have been “hugely exaggerated,” Stamatakis concluded.

Try moving every half hour

The good news is that it’s easy to make things better. Just move, both Stamatakis and Ahmadi said. Stroll around your office for a few minutes every half hour or so. Take a break and hurry up and down the nearest stairs. Or slip in some discreet squats while you remain standing in place at your desk. Sit down, stand up, sit down and stand again. “Transitioning frequently from sitting to standing is a good idea,” Stamatakis said, “as there will be some muscular contractions while doing that.”

This study is unlikely to be the last word on sitting and standing, of course. It’s not an experiment, so it doesn’t show that sitting or standing causes us to develop health problems, only that they’re linked. It also involved mostly White, relatively affluent Brits who chose to join the Biobank.

Still, it’s a useful wake-up call. “Standing, by itself, won’t lower the risk” of heart problems or other conditions associated with sitting, Ahmadi said. “It also won’t increase the risk, which is good.” But to make yourself healthier, you need to move around.