Your standing desk may not be making you healthier, study suggests

A new study has found that replacing standing with sedentary standing, like what you do at a standing desk, may not be enough to reduce the risk of heart disease over time. In fact, it could be harmful to your health, researchers reported in International Journal of Epidemiology.

The research specifically looked at whether people who sat more or sat more were more likely to develop two types of health problems: cardiovascular problems and orthostatic circulatory conditions such as varicose veins and venous ulcers (open sores on the legs).

Not only did the researchers find that standing wasn’t associated with improved heart health, but they found that it could lead to a higher risk of circulatory problems in some cases.

“It’s important to be aware of potential circulatory risks, as these conditions can arise from insufficient blood flow, which can occur over long periods of being in a static position, such as standing or standing.” Matthew Ahmadi, Ph.Dsaid the study’s lead author and a research fellow at the University of Sydney Health.

Here’s what else to know about the study, as well as what experts suggest you do in light of it.

Previous research has suggested that standing more could improve metabolic markers such as elevated cholesterol and triglycerides, which can signal an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. The authors noted, however, that few studies have gone further to measure hospitalizations and deaths from cardiovascular disease and the development of circulatory disease.

“This is important because it meant there was no information yet about the benefits or risks for circulatory conditions in the legs,” Ahmadi said. “Furthermore, most of the standing studies examined cardiometabolic markers, but not heart disease or circulatory conditions.”

To fill the gap, researchers in Australia and the Netherlands turned to UK Biobank, a large biomedical database and research resource.

They extracted data collected over seven days using a wrist-worn accelerometer from more than 83,000 adults. The participants were on average 61 years old and most of them had no history of cardiovascular or circulatory problems. Accelerometers tracked movement, including when standing or sitting.

Participants were then followed for an average of 6.9 years to see if they developed or died of coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke, or orthostatic circulatory disease, defined as varicose veins, venous ulcers, hypotension orthostatic or chronic venous insufficiency.

After analysis, the researchers found an association between sitting for at least 10 hours a day and increased risk of cardiovascular and circulatory disease, with the risk increasing for each additional hour spent sitting over 10 hours.

Being single, on the other hand, did not increase the chance of cardiovascular disease, but neither did it reduce the risk. Sedentary behavior for more than 12 hours, however, including standing, increased the risk of CVD.

For circulatory disease, each 30-minute increase over two hours of daily standing was associated with a higher risk.

“When you stand without moving to get your heart rate up, blood doesn’t move from your legs to your heart because of gravity. That’s how you get varicose veins,” Mukarram Siddiqui, MDsaid an electrophysiologist and chief of cardiology at Detroit Medical Center Sinai Grace Hospital. Health. “And when you sit down, your veins are constricted, and the blood can’t get back to the heart to keep recirculating.”

The finding that standing did not improve cardiovascular disease outcomes “wasn’t very surprising,” Ahmadi said. “To improve cardiovascular health, we need to engage the cardiovascular system, and standing alone doesn’t engage the system as effectively as other forms of activity that get the body moving.”

It is important to note that the study only showed correlations, but did not prove that sitting and standing increased or decreased the risk of cardiovascular or circulatory disease, Abhayjit Singh, MDsaid a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic Health.

“The primary outcome should be the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle, not necessarily the difference in specific risk rates from sitting versus standing,” Singh said. “We should encourage our patients to move, don’t just sit and maintain an active lifestyle.”

While standing is better than sitting, standing is still a stationary behavior and should be mixed with it circulation to optimize cardiovascular health and reduce the risk of circulatory conditions related to standing, Ahmadi explained.

If you have a job that requires you to stand or stand for extended periods of time, Siddiqui suggests:

• Lifting and moving for about 10 minutes at least every 45 minutes.
• Taking the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator.
• Using a phone app or a pedometer to track the number of steps you take. One review found that 8,000 to 10,000 steps are enough to keep people under 60 healthy, and 6,000 to 8,000 steps may be enough for older people.

Above all, Siddiqui said the most important thing is to find a way to move more, no matter how you do it. “The study’s findings reinforce that getting up and moving is better than standing or getting up and not moving.”