The ultimate new health accessory is here, and doctors are encouraging you to use it.
It’s not an Apple Watch, or even a Fitbit that’ll track how many steps you do a day.
We’re talking about the ‘standing desk’ — and it could just save your life, as long as you or your employer can fork our the $400 to $3000 you need to purchase one (or get creative in building your own).
The ‘standing desk’ is the biggest desk-related office craze to hit the market since people started sitting on giant, blue fit balls. Thankfully, that one didn’t last long.
And employers are being told to make standing at work not just a possibility, but a necessity.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald today, international health experts are calling on employers to do their bit to prevent heart disease, cancer and diabetes by ensuring staff can spend at least two hours a day either standing or moving around.
Two hours is the minimum, warned the team commissioned by the US government to produce employer guidelines to promote the health of workers. We should really be aiming for four hours of office-related movement.
The problem is that all this sedentry living has been disastrous for our health, the researchers found. That’s despite the proliferation of group-based exercise sessions and gyms in the last few decades. They estimated we’re now 20% less physical and exerting 175 calories less per day than we did in the 1920s.
So one solution is the ‘standing desk’. Or, if you’re really keen, the ‘treadmill desk’ — one that includes a treadmill to keep you constantly on the move (expect to pay much, much more for that one).
I work in an office, most of the time. Today, I’ve been siting in the same chair for the last four hours. There was a brief visit to the bathroom, which happens to be a good 100 metres up the hallway (so a healthy 200 metres there and back) as well as a short stroll over to a colleague’s computer (let’s say another 40, there and back).
That’s pretty much a morning of solid, back-breaking, heart-attack inducing sitting.
So I’ve been thinking, do I need a standing desk?
The fact is that I already have standing desk. It’s called the kitchen, where somehow I manage to multi-task on answering emails, watching the toddler and cooking dinner at the same time.
I even have a ‘treadmill desk’, it’s called using an iPhone to take notes and make phone calls, while taking an actual work.
Thank god for great, portable technology. We don’t need to completely change the office environment to get healthy. What we need to do is leave the office.
Do you have a standing desk? Thinking of getting one?