The 2024 edition of Orgatec Cologne, Europe’s, possibly the world’s, largest trade fair for office furniture and office design is being staged under the banner “New Visions of Work”.
And as that 2024 edition, and its new visions, approaches a report is published in the International Journal of Epidemiology that should provide for some animated discussions at the event: Standing to work at a desk may not be as good for you as you may have been told. And could even be problematic.
But there is some good news.
Though possibly not for desk manufacturers…….
A standing height table next to chair ‘just high enough that one can sit half standing’ as depicted in Journal der Moden, May 1786… The standing height desk isn’t as new as one might think
That we all sit too much is, like global warming and male privilege, hopefully a universally acknowledged problem and not a subject for discussion, rather one for action.
Is a problem necessitating of action in a variety of contexts, including the negative effects of long periods of sitting on the cardio-vascular system and the thereby increased risk of cardio-vascular disease.
But how do we stop sitting so much in office environments?
The conventional answer is to stand more in the office.
A long established office practice, the likes of, for example, Thomas Jefferson or Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were advocates of standing height desks in the 18th century, while the ledgers of yore meant office workers often had but little option to stand if they hoped to work with their books. Albeit a standing practice that in the early 20th century increasingly became a sitting practice, not least through the rise of objects such as the Modern Efficiency Desk alongside the conceptual and theoretical arguments that gave rise to such.
Thus a long established office practice that needed to be rediscovered in the 21st century as the negative effects of prolonged sitting became better understood; and in recent years standing height desks and height-adjustable sit-to-stand desks have become very much a thing, and every manufacturer, we’ll argue, has in their portfolio a range of options. And we wouldn’t be surprised if Orgatec 2024 brought forward armadas of new ones.
However, as an international team of researchers lead by Dr. Matthew N. Ahmadi from the University of Sydney note, “studies assessing the dose-response associations of standing, sitting and composite stationary behaviour time with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and orthostatic circulatory disease are scarce and show an unclear picture.”1
So they decided to develop a more focussed picture.
To this end they followed the health of some 83,000 UK adults over the course of 6.9 (±0.9) years2 and in doing so “observed a linear association for higher orthostatic circulatory disease risk from increased standing time with no protective association for CVD risk”, i.e. that while prolonged standing doesn’t increase the risk of CVD as prolonged sitting does — we promised you good news, there it is, enjoy it — prolonged standing doesn’t protect you from, or otherwise counteract, the risks of CVD associated with prolonged sitting, as it is often claimed it does. And prolonged standing increases the risk of orthostatic circulatory disease, such as, for example, “orthostatic hypotension, varicose vein, chronic venous insufficiency and venous ulcers”. Thus while standing rather than sitting is preferential, both can increase the risk of orthostatic circulatory disease.
And that, arguably, because, as the results suggest, “a common aspect of sitting and standing, i.e. absence of ambulatory movement, is likely to be important in the mechanistic pathway for orthostatic circulatory disease”, and that not least because “the lack of muscle movement during stationary time may result in a reduced venous return by skeletal muscle contraction and pumps contributing to venous pooling, causing orthostatic circulatory problems.” If you’re stationary, be that sitting or standing, and according to the study it essentially makes no difference which method of remaining stationary you choose, your blood is likely to stop flowing as it should, which over time, and with regular repetition, increases the risk of problems.
Conclusions which caused Dr. Ahmadi and his colleagues to opine that the “simple messaging to ‘sit less’ may not be optimal, as that would not lower the risk for those currently accumulating less than 10h a day and may even increase risk of musculoskeletal and circulatory issues by increasing the time spent standing”.3
Which is a bit of a 😲 moment.
Yes, the whole point of academic studies is so that someone else can try to prove them wrong, but as things stand it’s a bit of a 😲 moment.
Rather, for the research team, the better solution to counteract the well recorded negative aspects of long periods of sitting, the better solution to “reduce orthostatic circulatory disease risk” associated with long periods of sitting, isn’t standing, although standing is better than sitting alone… is movement, specifically “non-stationary movement (e.g. walking, cycling or other physical activities involving some degree of movement)”.
Or put another way: The answer to the health risks associated with office work isn’t the type of desk, it’s getting away from the desk.
The desk is the problem and can’t be the answer.4
Which tends to indicate that the “New Visions of Work” we very much need as not only work but technology and society continue their endless, ongoing change, for lest we forget, as the 1993 Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, exhibition/project Citizen Office elucidated we are, in terms of our office spaces, perpetually “on the threshold between criticism of existing convention and, as an option, examples, of a future office landscape”5, and that not least because of changes occurring outwith our office spaces, including research such as that by Dr. Ahmadi et al, those “New Visions” shouldn’t concentrate on office design or office furniture, for what is really needed as we progress through the 21st century, is new definitions of offices. ‘New Visions of Offices.’
At the risk of upsetting all those who don’t understand hybrid-working and four day weeks, of which we suspect there will be great many at Orgatec…… why the focus on the desk based workspace in offices? Why must everything happen at a desk, sitting height or standing height? Why can’t you have team meetings cycling through a park? Or in the gym? It’s where all the youth are anyway these days. And must you be at your home-office desk, in front of your carefully styled background, for that remote meeting, why not out walking the dog. Or canoeing? Is canoeing “non-stationary movement”? Doing Step Aerobics, that’s definitely “non-stationary movement”. Should office work hours only be measured in terms of time at a desk, sitting or standing, why can’t swimming or jogging or rock climbing be office work time? Is fresh air and exercise not meant to stimulate mind as much as body? Technology makes it possible for us to work from anywhere, but we work at desks as if it’s still the 20th century. Is hunkering over a desk with a coffee and piece of cake really the best approach to a meeting? Or just the most convenient and comforting? Can we reimagine offices without desks?
Why do office workers need to be at their desks when their desks, whether standing or sitting, contribute to the stationary lifestyle that Dr. Ahmadi and his colleagues suggest is the core problem rather than the sedentary lifestyle that has long been blamed?
We’re not at Orgatec this year, we’d love to be but simple calender clashes mean we’re not, but if you are, it’s a question well worth asking, do let us know how you got on……
1. Ahmadi, Matthew N. et al, Device-measured stationary behaviour and cardiovascular and orthostatic circulatory disease incidence, International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 53, Issue 6, December 2024 (Published online 16th October 2024)
2. For full details of the methodology see Ahmadi, Matthew N. et al FN1, the International Journal of Epidemiology is a peer reviewed journal so we assume that there are no question marks over the method and thus that we don’t need to get involved here
3. Yes the negative effects are noted after 10 hours of stationary behaviour per day, which sounds a lot; however, from the sampled individuals “Mean (SD) time spent stationary, standing and sitting was 12.8 (1.6) h/day, 2.1 (0.9) h/day and 10.7 (1.9) h/day, respectively. Participants spent an average of 71.3 min/day walking/running…” So clearly not that uncommon a reality. Hence the problems.
4. Yes, for many deciding to work at a standing height desk is also a question, as it arguably was for Jefferson or Goethe, of improving, for example, concentration or responsiveness, not exclusively a health question, and you can still do that. But for much shorter periods than you currently do. And ideally while dancing. Or doing Step Aerobics. Similarly questions of cardio-vascular health aren’t the only ones associated with office work, there are a great many health and well-being contexts in which one should, must, consider how and where you work, but the subject at hand is cardio-vascular health. And, we’d argues, in all other contexts getting away from your desk and being active is important.
5. Uta Brandes; Alexander von Vegesack [Ed], Citizen Office: Ideen und Notizen zu einer neuen Bürowelt, Steidl Verlag, Göttingen, 1994