And this is why I’m going to get a standing desk. Or try to make my own, inspired by Apartment Therapy.
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I love having a standing desk. I “created” one from a bookshelf and I can only mark up documents at it, but its a nice change of pace. I probably spend about 3 hours a day there.
Hemingway wrote/typed standing. Look at what-all good that did him! :)
Yeah he was able to drink WAY more booze that way. Win=Win.
I totally agree with the idea of this article but I really really hate how they are selling it with this whole ‘it will kill you’ concept. It comes across as hyperbolic and inaccurate. Like this quote the article Jill links to used,
That really seems like a scare tactic to me, it comes across as 40% of people who sit for long periods of time will die in 3 years. That’s NOT what it’s saying I’m sure but pulling that section without any context really makes it lose it’s value for me.
I’m all for helping people get healthy and impressing upon them the health risks involved in daily activities but I would prefer using reasoned well thought out arguments instead of FEAR!1!1!! Especially since there are all kinds of articles that have come out in the past that say this kind of thing and then a few years later they find out oh…wait…that was totally an exaggeration. Educate people but do it with reason.
Of course when I stood all day at work I hated it with a passion of a thousand suns and felt none of the benefits they talk about. So I’m a bit predisposed to be skeptical of those saying sitting is totes killing me. :)
Does anyone seriously think that “sitting down will kill you” is not intentionally hyperbolic? Come on now.
I use the Ikea Fredrik desk as a standing desk. It’s cheap, looks good, isn’t too hard to put together, and it’s fairly easy to adjust if you decide you need your keyboard or screen higher or lower. Plus, you can make it a regular desk if you ever decide you don’t like standing desks. I have it set up with my monitor on a higher shelf, keyboard on the main desk area one slot lower, then the other shelf almost all the way at the bottom with my printer on it. Just don’t get the matching Fredrik shelf – I realized after I attached it that there’s basically no way to adjust the desk now without destroying the drawer.
Oh, and I’d recommend getting really good shoes or a Gel Pro mat to ease your foot strain, plus a counter-height stool for when you get tired. You will want to take breaks when you first start using it, especially if you use the same computer desk for work and down time. I stand during the day and sit after 5pm.
And that’s why Donald Rumsfeld will live forever.
Is there a kind of desk that would have allowed Hemingway to experience a complete range of human emotions?
Jill,
I was talking more about the tone of the article, not the title of your post. I KNOW you were being hyperbolic :)
It was that quote I mentioned in my original post that I was referencing with the comment about the fear.
Sadly, no. There was only misogyny, assholery, and superior dialogue.
I really dislike how much time I spend sitting (which must be 99.9% of my waking hours, seriously), but I also have bad knee joints which I find tend to be inflamed by standing or slow walking (if I’m walking quickly, I can go for hours, but a slow meander through a grocery store or shopping mall or standing still for any length of time is deadly), so it’s a frustrating bind. I wonder if kneeling could be a compromise? I grew up with a rocking kneeling chair (like this one) that was magical – I could sit in it for hours with no back or knee pain, despite not having anything to rest or lean against… given that it’s more upright than other forms of sitting, I do wonder if it might have similar positive effects…
I like the idea of an adjustable desk, but $245 does not sound particularly “affordable” to me… Yeesh, neither does $495 for that kneeling chair, either. So much for reliving childhood memories!
Yes, Konekon1nj4, I noticed that quote too. It made me wonder how they could possibly have done a controlled experiment to get that statistic. If someone is going to die in the next three years, it is highly likely that that person has some external reason for that — like age or illness — and that external reason is pretty unlikely to correspond with a lot of energy and standing, is likely to correspond to sitting a lot. It’s a lot more likely that the reason for the eventual death of the person caused the sitting than the other way around.
I mean, on the other hand, I’ve certainly gained quite a bit of weight since going from school to office job. I sit in my car for an hour each way every day, and spend 8-10 hours sitting at my desk in between. Then I’m usually so exhausted mentally that I go home and sit on the couch. It’s true that it’s tough to get enough exercise to make up for that sort of sedentary lifestyle. I can see the attraction and benefit of spending some of that time standing.
Thomas, I love you for this.
I sit down a lot, but that’s balanced out by the fact that I have an odd habit of pacing around a room all the time. And if I’m not walking around aimlessly, I’m shaking my right leg as I sit. I wonder if it’s a sign of ADHD.
I’m pretty much sick of all the articles and media out there warning about all the ways I’ll die if I’m not like running 24-7, eating any animal byproducts whatsoever, not eating enough protein, eating any carbs at all, etc etc etc. Surreptitiously shamed for not standing all day? Seriously? I’m SO over it.
I think we need to reconsider the term “shaming.” Seriously, an article that points out that sitting for 8-10 hours a day is completely new in human history and has some negative impacts on one’s body is “shaming”? Information is not de facto shaming just because it points out that something a lot of people do is maybe not great.
“Is there a kind of desk that would have allowed Hemingway to experience a complete range of human emotions?”
Thomas MacAulay Millar, you just won the internet.
Would you want him too? all the best art is created by maladjusted substance abusing fornicators ;)
I tried a standing desk, and then I put my feet up on it. First one was very comfortable. . .
I don’t think it’s so much about “shaming” as about feeling slightly skeptical about the sudden attention paid to the idea of how bad sitting is, and how it has the hallmarks of a good old-fashioned moral panic.
And I think it’s especially important to have a little bit of skepticism on the whole topic because of how closely it’s related to our society’s huge moral panic about obesity.
Given that most people who sit all day do so because their jobs require them to do so, if it’s shaming/moral panicking about anything, it’s about our current economic system, not about individual choices.
I have an extremely DIY standing desk, otherwise known as my cheap Ikea table with a box on it which I put my computer on top of. I alternate between there and the couch all day, so I spend around 4-5 hours a day standing and working but my feet/knees get a rest. Also I have a mat I stand on.
Oh…and for people making a switch…prepare for pain. Your feet and legs will likely hurt like hell for a while. If you can gradually build up to it, that is better.
Sitting may or may not kill me but standing will be the end of my knees.
“I don’t think it’s so much about “shaming” as about feeling slightly skeptical about the sudden attention paid to the idea of how bad sitting is, and how it has the hallmarks of a good old-fashioned moral panic.
And I think it’s especially important to have a little bit of skepticism on the whole topic because of how closely it’s related to our society’s huge moral panic about obesity.”
Yeah that’s exactly where I was going and why I termed it ‘surreptitious shaming.’ It’s framed as moral panic in this article. So I’m at least taking a step back, even if there are some good points one could reasonably take away from it. And I’m personally feeling over how ubiquitous these kinds of scare studies are in popular media, when they are written in the language of moral panic or surreptitious shaming, particularly when they are often contradictory or near impossible to change depending on the individual.
I have Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome Type III, and Lupus (SLE). With the fun combination of all those, standing is rather painful between the tachycardia, hip dysplasia, and inflammatory arthritis. When I’m on my computer, I actually use a laptop partially laying down, because it’s the position I’m most comfortable in. POTS is a condition where your heart rate soars dramatically upon standing; my heart rate is usually at least around 150 BPM when I stand, and about 80-90 when I’m laying down or sitting. So, I’ll be sitting while I compute, studies be damned, TYVM.
Sorry, just a random disabled person interjecting, haha.
Indeed. Of course, I have fibromyalgia and recently tore my medial meniscus, so maybe I’m biased.
I just come from a long line of bad knees. You could track my family tree with knee xrays.
No one is forcing anyone to stand.
No, of course we’re not being forced. We’re just being reminded that sitting for extended periods of time is unhealthy and can kill us, and if we only “simply” stood up and moved around more during every day tasks, we’d be so much healthier.
Sorry that I take articles like this bitterly – perhaps I’m just sensitive, but it leaves a sour taste in my mouth as a disabled person. It just vaguely reminds me of the chorus of, “Well, maybe if you exercised more/tried yoga/got a standing desk/took the stairs/stopped being vegetarian, you wouldn’t be so sick!” I hear almost every day. I can just see a relative with “good intentions” forwarding this article to me now, not knowing how difficult simply standing can be for me at times. As I said, perhaps I’m being oversensitive, but maybe you would be sensitive to that sort of message too if you heard it constantly.
Can’t believe you all chose to tear down Hemingway in the same thread where Donald Rumsfeld was mentioned.
Never mind the war criminal who slaughtered and mutilated millions of people around the globe–let’s go after the artist.
Y’know, Marksman2010, it’s not a zero-sum game: we’re perfectly capable of criticising BOTH Rummy & Hemmy. And I think I will: I hate them both & they can SUCK MY LEFT NIPPLE!!!!
Anyway, to return to the topic at hand, whenever these “X will kill you” things come out, my response is, “Yeah, ok, fine — but unles our approach is to change the culture that requires many of us to sit most of the day, why the fuck even bring it up?” Get your standing desks all you want, they are not practical or even possible for many (if not most) of us. Instead of focussing on individual responses (and – by extension – individual “responsibility”), how about focussing on how these are cultural and political problems?
Don’t worry. I have enough contempt in my heart for both, enough that I’d through “misogynist” and “third-rate” in there and replace “artist” with “hack.”
No Jill, it is shaming and fear mongering. Surprised they didn’t add any fear mongering about getting fat either. People have the opportunity to sit because we are fortunate not to have to work 12 hours a day in the field or something like that. Since clearly standing computers aren’t selling on their own, they have to resort to correlated studies and scare tactics to sell them.
I think the news would’ve said something if almost half the population was dying from sitting. I agree with what Marissa123 said. There is shaming if you don’t run your lifestyle like a hamster on uppers in an exercise wheel. How dare people not spend every waking moment of their day moving! How dare they become fat, instead of becoming thin! There is an extreme amount of shaming for fat people, and sedentary people in our society.
I think you need to educate yourself more Jill, if you can’t see this article is using snake oil sales tactics to get people to buy their standing computers. I shouldn’t have to apologize, because I refuse to abide by the overexercizing, Anorexic like dieting craze our country claims is healthy. People are healthy, and businesses can’t make money from healthy people. So instead they’ll convince us adopting Anorexic eating behaviors is a “diet”, and that we’ll die if we don’t exercise manically.
That makes literally no sense.
Yes, we sit down because we no longer work 12 hours a day in the fields. But you’re being willfully ignorant if you think that sitting down for 6-10 hours a day has no impact on the human body. Scientists are pointing to the impact. Anecdotally, I feel the impact. The definition of “shaming” is not “a piece of information I don’t like or don’t want to hear.”
As for creating a ton of studies just to sell standing desks… huh? Why? There aren’t very many standing desks on the market, and as far as I can tell there are more of them now because folks want them. Because sitting down is causing pain and lethargy. It’s not like there’s a giant stockpile of standing desks somewhere and some evil CEO was like, “We must create fake scientific studies in order to move these units!”
No one is saying that half the population is going to die in the next few years from sitting down (what?). What I am saying — and what multiple studies have said — is that sitting for long periods of time, day in and day out, for years, is unheard of in human history and it’s having major impacts on our health. Some of those impacts may shorten our lifespan; at they very least, they create a bunch of health issues which are not great. Do whatever you want with that information. I am typing this while sitting down, actually. But studies pointing out that something is bad are not “shaming.” A study pointing out that cigarettes cause cancer isn’t “shaming” smokers. Etc etc.
This. I chimed in that the standing desk wouldn’t work FOR ME, but it didn’t feel ableist or fat-shaming to just point out that sitting is an issue.
This comment thread makes me want to cry.
This is a scientific study that says sitting all day has measurable negative effects on health. If the very act of studying the health effects of something a big chunk of the population does every day is now unacceptable, then I give up on the world. This is not an attack on you, personally. If you have a health condition that makes standing unhealthy, guess what? This study doesn’t apply to you, because for you standing is less healthy than sitting! If you have a job that makes you sit, or if you just prefer to sit, go for it! But if you think that the act of studying and reporting on the health effects of something that most of our jobs force us to do every day is shaming, then we are about one step away from someone commenting on this thread that you are shaming people with your pro-ignorance, anti-science stance. And honestly, I would find that less ridiculous than a bunch of the comments on this thread.
I’m not anti-science; I just think that there are still biases in scientific studies. Being a disabled person, these studies on the “general population” hardly take people with disabilities and our needs into account, despite the fact that people with disabilities and chronic illnesses make up a decent chunk of the general population. Our needs are erased, as they so often tend to be. I mean, what’s a person like to me to do? It’s unhealthy for me to stand, but it’s unhealthy for me to sit. What am I supposed to do? Just be content with dying earlier? There’s a large population of us out there where it’s not so easy as just “stand more”, because we can’t freaking stand.
I made my point about how the article rubbed me the wrong way as a disabled person, and I still stand by it. I don’t need able-bodied people telling me what I should or should not get put off by in my reality as a disabled woman. It wasn’t seriously offensive to me; it just had vague tones of ableism that left a sour taste in my mouth.
I have retrained myself from sitting for half the day to lying down for half the day. It’s been a surprisingly easy adjustment to make, but I have not yet found a quality lying-down desk.
Also, laptops are really not ideal for use while lying down – the edge tends to cut into one’s wrists. And drinking one’s coffee is a challenge.
but surely lying down is just as bad? or is it not? I am so confused!
Er. I seriously don’t think that the solution to the health problems of perpetual sitting is ALWAYS STANDING. Prolonged standing leads to a hell lot of problems on its own, varicose veins among them. When it comes to your blood vessels, it’s important to take the weight OFF of your legs as much as possible, whether by lying down or sitting. It’s a consequence of our bodies’ biology not yet being too well-accustomed to walking upright at this point.
The key to making sitting less unhealthy is to introduce more muscle activity into it (as in: immaculate posture), not to switch out for something potentially even worse.
Good news: my treadmill walking desk cost one free piece of scrap lumber, a few Velcro scraps, and a dollar for spray paint. It will hold a laptop and Samsung’s smallest printer.
Bad news: after a year, my treadmill decided to develop its own magnetic field which shuts down the Wi-Fi. I’ve tried every solution suggested online, and the treadmill company’s parts clerk told me not to spend the $99 on a new control panel, because it would develop the same problem.
So, now it really is a standing desk, since I am suspicious of magnetic fields. I’m also wary of purchasing another (you call it cheap, I call it extravagant) treadmill, because they are notorious for interference.