Standing is still this author’s choice.
It would’ve been fair to say that the recent “coconut oil is bad for you” report from the AMA was the apex of junk science for 2017. And yet somehow, a new “study” has found a way to top it. According to research published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, standing all day is “twice as bad” for you as sitting. So now the mainstream media outlets that have picked up the story are doing their typical flip-flop, deserting the sitting is bad for you position they had staked out for the past couple of years and doing a complete 180-degree turn to now state that it’s actually standing that’s the enemy.
But before we start taking a stand against, well, standing, let’s try to put the new study in context. In defense of the researchers, headed up by a team from Toronto’s The Institute for Work and Health, they derived their findings from a fairly long term study – 12 years, in fact. And the sample size was considerable, with 7,320 people taking part. There was also no gender bias, as it was a 50-50 split between male and female participants.
Yet while this report has its merits, it also has some shortcomings that shouldn’t be ignored. First, the study paid no attention to prior disease history, stress, diet, sleep or other environmental or lifestyle factors that might have contributed to the standing group having a greater incidence of cardiovascular disease. Of course it’s fairly typical for an experiment to try and isolate one or two variables, but trying to then extrapolate isolated findings to make a broad conclusion – like standing is worse for you than sitting – is a dangerous business.
Second, before we throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water, we need to also consider the results of other studies on the subject. In his book Get Up! Why You Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It, Dr. James Levine from the Mayo Clinic cites research showing that two hours of continuous sitting increases your risk of developing cancer, diabetes, metabolic syndromes and, yes, heart disease. Back in 2010 the same journal that published the new study included another one by the American Cancer Society that was far broader in scope and followed 123,316 people over the course of 13 years. The authors found that men who sat more than six hours a day were 48 percent more likely to die during the time period studied than those who sat less than three hours and exercised regularly, while for women that number rose to a whopping 94 percent.
All-cause mortality aside, sitting too much also causes or contributes to a wide range of orthopedic problems including migraines, neck pain and low back pain that incurs upwards of $100 billion in medical care and lost productivity each year in the US. For athletes, prolonged sitting mitigates the benefits of training, reduces range of motion in the hip, knee and other joints and can cause chronic soreness and stiffness that compromise athletic performance.
All this said, the new study isn’t bunk. It’s true that standing in one place for a long time can cause varicose veins, lead to restrictions in the foot and ankle and so on. But due to the factors mentioned above and many more, sitting is still the orthopedic perfect storm we thought it was before this new research was published. The real key to improving health in the workplace and, for our kids, in the classroom, is to move more. On balance, standing is still preferable to sitting (it burns more calories, improves productivity and prevents orthopedic dysfunction, to name just three reasons), but if you are going to stand, then try to fidget, get in some bodyweight exercises during the day, take walking meetings and yes, occasionally take a load off your feet by briefly taking a seat. You can also use a high stool to perch on the edge of or lean on periodically. But let’s not let one new piece of research completely change our minds, or be so reductionist that we try to distill health down to one or two variables. As humans, we’re made to move, so let’s stop being stationary – whether that’s sitting, standing or both.
