“Vertical tables don’t work”

Sitting all day is bad for our health, and spending all the time standing doesn’t improve it much. This conclusion, as well as the introduction of research conducted by experts regarding our working days, chairs and tables. All in accordance with the widely held belief that standing desk They are useful for preventing back pain and the like.

However, there are some details that need to be clarified. Desks, also known as lift or vertical desks, are useful in many situations. The problem is overusing them or trusting everything just by working on them. Using the Apple Watch, as strange as it may seem in this matter, is convenient because it attacks the main weak point of these procedures.

Why working standing is not enough and even harmful

Sitting in front of a screen during long workdays is harmful for several reasons. From the effects on your eyesight of spending so many hours in front of a computer, to back pain or circulation problems from spending so much time immobile and sitting. However, the study we talked about is not about this, but rather the opposite: about standing.

Experts studied 83,000 adults who worked for several weeks while standing at their desks for several hours. The great conclusion they reached is that their protection against cardiovascular risks has not improvedsomething we might think a priori happens when we change our daily routine to get up.

Moreover, this is far from something harmless, Spending long hours on your feet can also be dangerous. for blood circulation, creating blood clots and lowering blood pressure. So while it’s not exactly the same thing, it can be said that spending long hours sitting is just as bad as standing.

What should we do then? Let’s move. Simple and effective. This is another conclusion reached by experts who warn that Instead of standing, it is advisable to take breaks and walk regularly.. We don’t have to go outside or take 10,000 steps. It will be enough for us to stand, stretch in place or take short walks around the room or office where we are.

It is at this last moment that we believe that Apple Watch interferes. And no, not just because of how useful it is for measuring vital signs and keeping track of the iPhone’s Health app, but because your regular hourly notifications that tell us that we must move. They appear on and fifty Until we moved since they were spicy. This is part of the famous rings of activity.

The key is a balance between sitting, standing and exercise.

Since experience is a degree, I would not like to close this information without adding my pinch. Moreover, months have passed checking first-hand whether what this study says is true

. I already mentioned this in Applesfera in an article in which I commented on my first weeks using a lift table.

I won’t go into as much detail as I did then, but I want to provide some context. I’ve been working remotely for almost ten years and have suffered from back problems for five years, mostly related to spending at least eight hours sitting. So I found it convenient to have a desk that I could lift up a couple times a day so I could spend a few minutes standing.

Well, now that time has passed, I can testify that standing up really helps in many ways. Firstly, in the psychological aspect, since you change your posture and this stimulates the task you are developing in a certain way. And secondly and most importantly, because it really helps my back to free up along with my legs. Spending at least two hours (not consecutive) on my feet during the workday helps prevent the terrible pain I suffered from time to time.

However, the magic recipe is not that lifting table. Or at least not just this ingredient. As the study itself has shown, this is not enough, and this it is important to accompany this with exercises

. Personally, I prefer to take a short walk down the hallway at home before resuming standing work, but I also do other strength exercises with weights, squats, or long walks outside. Not during working hours, of course.

In my experience, the key is to balance standing work with light stretching and walking around the house, and accompany it with other exercises in your free time. As I explained, these are very home exercises or practiced on the street (walk), so you don’t need to go to the gym either. The pro level is what our colleague Amparo does by adding a treadmill to a standing desk.

Via | Washington Post

Cover image | TheStandingDesk on Unsplash

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