Do you really need a standing desk? The science

Do you really need a standing desk? The science

You may have seen standing desk companies make some pretty bold marketing claims.

In perhaps the first ever application of my undergrad research skills, I thought I would dive into Google Scholar to see what studies about standing desks actually say.

On health:

It is pretty clear excessive sitting is bad for you. There are links between excessive sitting and a whole range of bad health effects, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and ultimately, premature death.

But do standing desks actually address this? i.e. will you actually stand up more?

This study found that introducing standing desks in the workplace did reduce sitting time. After 3 months, sitting reduced by an average of 100 minutes per workday for each employee. After 12 months, this average had gone down to 57 minutes per day. We stand up more with standing desks, but the amount of standing we do seems to reduce over time.

The way I see it, 57 minutes is still better than 0.

Note - Having a standing desk won't actually help you burn more calories - for example, this study found that:

While sitting, people burned an average of 80 calories/hour.

While standing, people burned 88 calories/hour.

For comparison, walking burned 210 calories/hour.

Mortality rates tend to go down with less sitting, but this does not correspond to how many calories you burn. If you want to burn more calories, I'm afraid you're actually gonna have to leave your desk. God forbid, go outside.

There are studies that claim a range of other benefits, like reducing stress and improving overall mood. But meta-analyses generally say that the evidence base is pretty poor - the studies that do exist are generally low quality. The truth is, we don't know that much about whether standing desks are worth it.

Also, we don't want to stand up too much. There are lots of jobs, for example in retail, food, healthcare and education, where people stand up for the majority of the time. But we don't hear about the health benefits of working these jobs.

This review of 50 studies found that there were associations between occupational standing and musculoskeletal symptoms, especially lower back problems. We don't know what the optimum amount of standing vs. sitting time is, but it's not as simple as the more standing the better. Standing for, say, over four hours per day at work may have negative consequences.

On productivity:

Standing desks will NOT make you more productive. I can personally vouch for this, I still procrastinate as much as ever, but the evidence also seems to conclude the same.

This study in a call centre found that standing desks led to no difference in productivity.

A few studies like this one even say that your concentration is worse while standing, because you are using brain resources to control your back and legs, so you have less attention to allocate to your work.

On this basis, you might be wondering, what swayed it for me to buy a standing desk?

Well, they're really cool. Take that, science.