Standing While You Work: Your Life May Depend On It!

The UPLIFT will keep you working in style and good health.

I know what you’re thinking. “Here Human Solution goes again, trying to scare me with statistics into buying one of their fancy height-adjustable desks.” A few years ago, we ran a blog post simply titled “Sitting Can Kill You,” which included some numbers that suggested that prolonged sitting can shorten your lifespan. Well, those merchants of doom we call scientists have released another study, and it looks like it may be even worse than we thought.

According to a study led by the University of Sydney, adults who sat for 11 hours a day or more had a 40 percent higher risk of dying in the next three years than adults who sat for less than four hours a day. And before you say, “Yeah, but I exercise regularly when I’m not sitting,” that was adjusting for age, weight, health and physical activity. Pretty scary stuff!

The study involved more than 200,000 people 45 and up, but its findings should alarm any chair potato who thinks they can just exercise away the effects of prolonged sitting. Not that physical activity doesn’t do any good – that 40 percent becomes 100 percent when comparing those who sat the most and exercised the least to those who exercised the most and sat the least, according to the study. But according to Asian Scientist magazine, the average adult spends about 90 percent of their leisure time sitting down, and our bodies weren’t designed to sit for that long. If you’ve spent eight hours or more at a desk during the day, you probably don’t need to be told about the negative effects as you’re likely aware of them.

Before Human Solution hooked me up with a height-adjustable desk, at my previous desk job I would be so tired that when I got home all I wanted to do was just sprawl out in front of the television. My wife, being in the service industry at the time and on her feet all day, couldn’t quite understand how tiring sitting in a cube all day was (that all changed of course once she got a job in tech support and found out herself). Now we have empirical data to back up what those of us working in a chair all day already knew.

So how can you get your work done without staying hunched over in a chair all day? You guessed it, a fancy height-adjustable desk! Hey, I didn’t say I wasn’t trying to scare you into getting one. But the stats don’t lie, and I can tell you from experience that it’s worth it. Apart from the fact that you’re fighting off an early death, the increased energy and blood flow and resulting focus and increased production are enough to warrant upgrading your workstation. I suggest taking a look at our UPLIFT adjustable height desks with beautiful, locally custom made wood tops if you want the comfort of a height-adjustable workstation and the beauty of a wood top. Your life may depend on it!