New study suggests standing desks may not be the fix for heart health

Standing desks have been trendy for over a decade, due in large part to their claims of increased health for those of us who use a computer for hours every day. A new study with years of data and tens of thousands of participants throws cold water on those claims, suggesting that standing desks aren’t helping with some core health problems.

In the December 2024 issue of the International Journal of Epidemiology, a team of researchers published a study with data from over 83,000 participants in the United Kingdom who had mixed both sitting and standing for work. They found that “stationary time” increased circulatory system disease risk.

Sitting for more than 10 hours a day across an extended period of time was associated with a 13 percent increase in heart problems over seven years and 26 percent greater prevalence of circulatory disorders. The longer participants remained stationary, the greater the risk (as measured by an increased average heart rate). Hence the push to get people to periodically stand at a desk instead of sitting in a chair.

The more concerning data is that time spent standing for the same stationary tasks didn’t significantly reduce those risks. In fact, standing still for hours and hours as an alternative to sitting came with measurably higher risks for orthostatic circulatory diseases, including “orthostatic hypotension, varicose vein, chronic venous insufficiency, and venous ulcers.” But, again, this isn’t shocking — doctors have known that standing still for long hours for work, repeated across weeks, months, and years, has some predictably bad outcomes.

The report is pretty dense, academically. (The Washington Post has a story summarizing the findings, but it’s sadly behind a paywall.) The concerning takeaway is that those who stood for two hours a day, in addition to sitting in mostly sedentary task, didn’t notably decrease their risk for circulatory issues. In layman’s terms: Sitting for a long time is bad, standing stationary for a long time is bad, and mixing it up isn’t really going to change any of that.

The researchers recommend more meaningful movement with plenty of muscle contractions — walking around would do it — every 30 minutes to help avoid both cardiovascular and orthostatic circulatory disease risk.

I’ve dealt with spine issues for most of my adult life. One of the most frustrating things about it is that quantified research on the best things to do is hard to find. Ergonomics, especially for computers, and especially in conjunction with any kind of marketing, often boils down to “vibes.”

As both a back pain sufferer and a constant user of standing desks (and other alternatives to conventional chairs, like yoga balls), the most useful conclusion I’ve come to is that you should simply listen to your body. If your back or shoulders are sore after an entire day sitting at a desk, it’s an indication that something needs to change. Find something that works for you… and that may or may not be what works for anyone else.

I appreciate that this sounds like an old joke. “It hurts when I do this,” the patient says to the doctor. “Then don’t do that,” the doctor replies. But it’s also pretty common sense. Combining that with the usual (and much more concrete) advice on regular exercise and diet will help you feel better, even if you can’t avoid sitting or standing in the same position for hours every day.