Everyone today knows about the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle and how it literally brings you closer to premature death. However, office jobs prevail and even if you aren’t sitting for hours on end in an office, you are most likely sitting for far too long elsewhere. I know I am and I make a conscious effort not to do this.
But let’s not devolve into ranting about unhealthy habits and instead focus on the solutions to the problem of sitting too much. One of the leading ones was the creation of a standing desk. These desks were supposed to help office workers stay healthier by literally eliminating the sitting time.
However, before you buy one of those for yourself or equip your office with such, you need to find an answer to a very important question.
If sitting for long periods of time is bad for your health, is standing for long periods of time better?
It turns out that it’s not.
Long-term effects of prolonged standing are as bad as those of sitting. Therefore, by switching from one type of desk to another you aren’t doing yourself any favors. Standing desks do eliminate the problems caused by sitting, but they only replace them with a different kind of problems.
You see, health issues of the sedentary lifestyle caused bot so much by the position you spend your time in as by the lack of movement.
So, is there no hope for the millions of office workers and those trapped in other sedentary jobs?
Of course, there is hope!
All you need to do in order to reduce the damage inflicted by your work is to get moving. You can use either type of desk and it’ll be even better if you switch from one to the other every few hours. But the most important thing for your health is to move, so do that. Do a few sit-ups every 30 minutes and take a short walk around your office building every hour and you’ll do wonders for improving your health and longevity.
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