Patients often ponder which position is better for the body in terms of lower back health — standing or sitting? Sitting in an office chair is, at best, a necessary evil. To add fuel to the fire, if you are sitting in an office chair that is not designed with your body in mind, it is only a matter of time before you encounter lower back pain. The recent Bloomberg Businessweek article “Your Office Chair is Killing You” by Arianne Cohen explains how the seated position does nothing to recruit the core muscles. A repetitive cycle of weakness is reinforced with sitting, regardless of the quality of the chair. My previous blog entry “The Health Consequences of Sitting All Day” delves into the problems associated with gluteus maximus weakness as a result of sitting. The office chair industry does however attempt to address some of the structural issues associated with prolonged sitting. Structurally speaking, a problem that I see with sitting involves the positions of the lowest vertebrae.
We have a tendency to roll our pelvises backwards when seated for long periods of time. This slouching position places stress on the discs, which potentially leads to long term problems such as disc herniations. This rolling backwards of the pelvis can at least be partially dealt with by adjusting the height of the chair. Most people will benefit from a chair that allows his or her hips to sit in a slightly higher position than the knees, with both feet resting flat on either the floor or on a stool. The office chair should also offer support to the lower back to mimic the natural lordotic curve of the lower back and discourage the backwards slumping motion. Your lower back, mid back, and shoulder blades should all make contact with the upright support of your office chair. The best thing that you can do for your lower back at work is to get out of your chair. Many people who have sedentary jobs have adapted their work spaces to include an office chair and a standing work station.
Ms. Cohen’s article highlights an office setup that used treadmills at office work stations. That might sound extreme, but I’m willing to bet that once these office workers have built up endurance, the incidences of lower back pathologies will decrease. European office furniture manufacturers have work desks with hydraulic mechanisms that accommodate for both the seated and standing positions. Why has this not caught on in the United States? Ask your employer about implementing these types of alternative set-ups. Your back may thank you for it. What have you tried to make your office chair more comfortable? Write a comment and tell us about it! Posted in: Pain ManagementFive or more hours of sedentary sitting, according to Dr. David Agus, is the health equivalent of smoking a pack and a quarter of cigarettes. Yet, sitting around is something we get plenty of practice at. Reading and writing and creating on a computer makes for big chunks of sedentary time. If you’re reading this post right now, are you sitting down?
How long have you been sitting? It’s a topic that I think of often. We’ve all kind of taken a shining to it on the Buffer team, being more aware of the time we spend in front of the computer, how we take breaks, how we focus on exercise and movement. And we’re not alone. There is tons of interest out there about the healthiest way to survive a sedentary job—from the health recommendations to the tools to the activities. So what is indeed the healthiest way? And what can you change about your style today to get the biggest benefit? Stand up every 20 minutes. Studies have shown that our bodies can benefit from simply standing up, contracting muscles, and moving. Think of standing as pushing a reset button on your body. If you press the reset button before the timer hits 20 minutes, you’ll avoid any of the negative side effects of a sedentary job. Gretchen Reynolds, a reporter on exercise research for The New York Times, wrote a book condensing health studies down to their most essential parts.
One of the key takeaways from her research was this emphasis on standing up and the golden 20-minute mark. New science shows very persuasively that standing up about every 20 minutes, even for only a minute or two, reduces your risks of developing diabetes and heart disease. By standing up, you cause the big muscles in your legs and back to contract, which leads to an increase in certain enzymes that break up fat in the blood stream. You don’t have to jog in place or do jumping jacks. A very pleasant additional benefit is that standing up every 20 to 30 minutes also seems to prompt the body to burn calories, so you don’t gain as much weight from sitting at the office most of the day. If you can stand up every 20 minutes — even if you do nothing else — you change how your body responds physiologically. Other studies confirm the benefit of this simple act of standing. For instance, a study of employees at New Balance shoe headquarters showed that performing an activity every 30 minutes—standing, walking, stretching—improved not only health but also engagement and concentration.
So now the question becomes: How do you stand up every 20 minutes? At Buffer, each person on the team is equipped with a Jawbone UP to track our movement, activity levels, and sleep. At the end of every day, we can see how we moved (or didn’t move). For instance, here’s my Thursday. Those big, flat valleys are exactly the types of inactive stretches it’s best to avoid. Solution: The UP band lets you set a move reminder that causes your wristband to buzz after a certain amount of inactivity. Set it to 20 minutes, and stand up when it buzzes. Other fitness bands offer similar functionality, too. And if you’d prefer to keep things super straightforward, you can go with a trusty phone or kitchen timer to set a manual notification for yourself. One of our favorite work hacks on the Buffer team is workstation popcorn. You start your day with a to-do list, then plan your list around different cafes, coffee shops, and workstations, popping from one to the next once you’ve completed a set of tasks.
For instance, you might start the day at the office, spend the late morning at a coffee shop, hit a co-working space in the afternoon, and return to the office conference room to wrap up your day. Walking in between each work place injects multiple opportunities for movement into your day. Though you won’t be popping from station to station every 20 minutes, you can supplement the 20-minute rule with these popcorn intervals, helping you achieve more consistent movement throughout the day. One variation on the standing theme is that it’s not necessarily about standing up. The Cornell Ergonomics lab has the following advice: Every 20 minutes stand for 2 minutes AND MOVE. The absolute time isn’t critical but about every 20-30 minutes take a posture break and move for a couple of minutes. Movement is important to get blood circulation through the muscles. And movement is FREE! Research shows that you don’t need to do vigorous exercise (e.g. jumping jacks) to get the benefits, just walking around is sufficient.
So build in a pattern of creating greater movement variety in the workplace In theory, moving can happen whether you’re standing or not. There are several chair options (see below) that allow for more movement than the traditional office chair. You can rock back and forth and lean side to side, and you’d be getting the muscle exercise you need via these simple movements. The same goes for those who stand while working. Standing still for long stretches will eventually lead to its own set of health problems (undue pressure on joints, for instance), so you’re better off swaying, rocking, and stretching while you stand. Perhaps the most obvious (and increasingly popular) idea of how to stand and move more at work is to convert your workstation with a standing desk. If you’re curious to try this for yourself, all the best advice is to start small and cheap. And take things slow. Small and cheap is the best way to start because you don’t want to pay big bucks for something you don’t like and therefore might not enjoy using.
High-end standing desks can cost over $1,000. Therefore, it’s best to give a standing workstation a trial before you commit to a steep price tag. First things first, posture is essential no matter what desk you use. Here’s a helpful graphic from Wired about the appropriate height, distances, and angles for a standing desk. You’ll notice that this type of setup gets a little difficult with a laptop because the keyboard and screen would be on the same level. If you plan on a standing desk for your laptop, it might be best to invest in a standalone keyboard and mouse so that you can adjust your screen and peripherals to the ideal height. As for the desk itself … In the spirit of starting small, the fixed-height standing desk should come first. This can be as simple as spending a few days working from a kitchen counter or a coffee bar. Other folks have found creative ways of building a simple setup to try out. Programmer Marco Arment built a Coke can stand for his monitor and keyboard.
The $22 IKEA desk hack is the brainchild of Colin Nederkoom, CEO of Customer.io. With side tables, shelves, and brackets purchased at IKEA, Nederkoom put together a custom desk for his monitor and keyboard/mouse. Products like the Varidesk and Kangaroo Pro help convert a standard desk into a standing desk, and they have the adjustable power to set the screen and keyboard at the ideal height. The advantages of an adjustable desk are likely to be noticed immediately: you can vary the height at which you work when sitting, standing, or moving in between. The hybrid options like the Varidesk and Kangaroo Pro help bridge the gap between non-adjustable desks and the full-on, standalone adjustable desks. For the best standalone adjustable desks, I’ll cede the floor to the Wirecutter, which tested a number of desk options and found that the NextDesk Terra was the best standing desk on the market. Starting at more than $1,000, investments into these upper-end desks is not cheap.
If you’d like a cheaper option, you might consider something more like Safco’s Muv Stand-up, which starts at $274. Along with a standing desk, a supplement to moving more while you work is to find an active desk chair that supports constant movement and good posture. Even those who opt for standing at work find that it’s best not to stand all day; a 70:30 split of standing to sitting is often best. The following chairs can help. These adjustable stools and seats can fit either workstyle—standing or sitting—and they support constant movement throughout the day by being just unstable enough to keep your muscles in motion. In a study of marathoners, researchers found that participants trained an average of 40 miles per week, which is enough exercise to place them among the most active adults. At the same time, these runners sat idle for nearly 12 hours per day. Hence the term “active couch potatoes.” Interestingly, studies have shown that idle sitting (e.g. sedentary work) is an independent predictor of disease, meaning that daily exercise before or after work does not cancel out a day of sitting in front of the computer.