A18 From Page One standing from A1
Donald H. Rumsfeld works standing up. So does novelist Philip Roth.) But unknown to them, a debate is percolating among ergonomics experts and public health researchers about whether all office workers should be encouraged to stand—to save lives. In academic papers with titles
such as, “YourChair:Comfortable but Deadly,” doctors point to sur- prising new research showing higher rates of diabetes, obesity, heart disease and even mortality among people who sit for long stretches.Astudy earlier this year in the American Journal of Epide- miology showed that among 123,000 adults followed over 14 years, thosewhosatmorethan six hours a day were at least 18 percent more likely to die during the time period studied than those who sat less than three hours a day. “Every rock we turn over when
it comes to sitting is stunning,” said Marc Hamilton, a leading researcher on inactivity physiolo- gy at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana. “Sitting is hazardous. It’s danger- ous.We are on the cusp of a major revolution aboutwhatwethink of as healthy behavior in the work- place.” He calls sitting “the new smoking.” Not so fast, other experts say. Standing too much at work will cause more long-term back inju- ries — ask factory workers, they say. Incidences of varicose veins among women will increase. The heart will have to pump more. Alan Hedge, a noted ergonomics scholar at Cornell University, went so far as to call standing at work “one of the stupidest things one would ever want to do.This is the high heels of the furniture industry.” What everyone can agree on,
though, is that we were not exact- ly built to sit. “We were built to stand, to move, to walk,” said James Levine, a Mayo Clinic en- docrinologist who is so fanatical about not sitting at work that he walks at 1 mph all day on a treadmill at his desk. He’s the author of that “Com-
fortable but Deadly” paper,andin it, he provides a remarkable his-
EZ RE
KLMNO
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2010 Where do health experts stand on a workplace trend?
long, that’s gone too. I’m just more comfortable now.” Eric Friedman, head of Mont-
gomery County’s Office of Con- sumer Protection, started stand- ing at work nearly 10 years ago. “All of my stress collects in my neck and I was getting a lot of headaches.” he explained. He doesn’t know what kind of shape he’dbe in without standing, given that “all I feel like I do is swat down e-mails all day.” Like other standers, he said he
wouldn’t go back to sitting. Hedge, the Cornell professor,
isn’t a fan of all this standing. “Making people stand all day is dumb,” he said. “Standing in- creases torso muscle activity and spinal disc pressure, increases the risk of varicose veins, increas- es the risk of carotid artery dis- ease, and increases the load on the heart.” The sensible and most cost-ef-
fective strategy, he said, is to sit in a neutral posture, slightly re- clined, with the keyboard on a tray above the lap. This position promotes positive blood flow. Workers should then occasionally walk around, stretch and avoid prolonged periods at the desk. Thekey, he said, ismovement,not standing. “If you stand all day, you will be
worse off than ifyousit allday,”he said. Proponents of standing in the
TRACY A. WOODWARD/THE WASHINGTON POST
“It feels more natural to stand. I wouldn’t go back to sitting,” saysAOLexecutiveMark Ramirez, in his office at the company’s Dulles facility. The injury went away, but
tory ofhowwebecamea nation of sitters. The short version is that hunter-gatherersbecameagricul- turists, the Industrial Revolution moved us into factories and the technological revolution moved us behind desks. And hereweare, pecking away. “With creativity, a person can
eat, work, reproduce, play, shop and sleep without taking a step,” Levine wrote. “Once enticed to the chair, we were stuck. Work and home alike: we do it sitting.” But when we sit, researchers say, important biological process-
es take a nap. An enzyme that vacuums dangerous fat out of the bloodstream works properly only when a body is upright. Standing also seems to ward off deadly heart disease, burn calories, in- crease how well insulin lowers glucose and produce the good kind of cholesterol.Most of these processes occur — or don’t — regardless of whether someone exercises. Human beings need to stand. “At 160 pounds, it takes a tre- mendous amount of machinery to keep me upright, and this
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process does more than simply holdmeup,” Levine said while on his desk treadmill. “Quite clearly, there are fundamental metabolic switches that go on when you stand up. The body isn’t built to be sitting stationary all day long.” Kate Kirkpatrick stands at
work, although not because she knew that doing so might extend her life. She had no idea. An executive at Gensler, an interna- tional design and architecture firm in the District, she began standing last year after a running injury made sitting painful.
Kirkpatrick never retook her seat. She has a keyboard attached to her desk, which rises so she can stand and use it. She works most of the day standing up, wearing comfy running shoes. Her prized Aeron chair, that staple of mod- ern office life? Pushed to the side. She feels great. “Idon’tget that need-to-take-a-
nap feeling in the middle of the day anymore,” Kirkpatrick said. “My body just feels more healthy. I’mmore alert. The tightness you get in the neck from sitting all day
workplace concede that they don’t know how much upright- ness is needed to produce the benefits they associate with standing tall. Studies are under- way to test dose responses: How much of X is needed to produce Y?
“A lot of those answers aren’t
available yet, but we’re going to get them,” said Hamilton, the Pennington researcher. “It’s not a matter of being
excessive, ludicrous and insane about standing, but it cuts both ways,” said the Mayo Clinic’s Levine. “If one were to be sitting all day, compulsively, that is equally absurd as far as the body’s construction is concerned. The evidence is in: Sitting all day is harmful for our health.” Half-jokingly, he summed up
his stance: “Sitters of the world, unite. It is time to rise up now.”
rosenwaldm@washpost.com
can help inspire youth build the future
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