Nina In New York: Standing At Work Probably Won't Help You, But Sitting Will Definitely Still Kill You

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

We here at Nina In New York like to stay on top of lots of trends, and none has been quite as much fun as the eternal "sitting will kill you" saga. Since sitting was declared the new smoking back in 2000-whenever (fact checker is on vacation), we've been given a lot of different advice. Stand up at work! Walk at your desk. Bike at your desk. Take your desk for a walk. Quit your desk job and seek work as a fieldhand. Don't even bother exercising more before or after work, because you're still screwed as long as you're sitting for eight hours a day.

So forward-thinking companies and office inhabitants traded their seats for standing and walking and cycling desks, and they took perambulating meetings, and everyone felt pretty good about their odds of cheating death by comfy chair.

Well, this just in: you're still screwed.

According to new research out of Finland which scrutinized the twenty "best" studies completed on the effects of standing desks and their ilk, there is really no reliable evidence that swapping out your rolly chair will actually reverse the effects of sitting. At this point, it's merely a fad, they say, and one based on flawed studies that are too small and confined, or studies which come to conflicting conclusions and cancel each other out. There's no existing study which definitively proves that standing is any better for one's health than sitting.

Boom. Sucks to your standing workstation, internet startup friends.

Of course, that doesn't mean standing or walking while working for part of the day isn't necessarily good for you. If you enjoy it, well, stand away. Just know that you're probably not going to live any longer as a result. So forget it! Just sit yourself down and relax, because life is short, right? Right. Then again, you should remember that with every minute you're in that seat, you're still slowly killing yourself with your butt. Oh, what to do? What to do? Fie on you, inconclusive science!

So now maybe you're in a sort of panicky limbo trying to decide the best course of action, and you're sort of stuck between a sit and a stand. Guess what? You just did a squat! Congratulations, you're exercising. Ten extra minutes of life will be awarded to you. Knowledge really is power, after all.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!