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Comment by tomrod | Hacker News Reader

When I began a new job about a year ago, I found out my completely modular cube had the capacity for me to change the height of my desk.

At that point, I raised it up to standing level, bought a standing mat from Home Depot, and never looked back.

I know that standing desks tend to get a bit of a cult following, but I'll say that I just feel better standing all day. There was a break-in period of about 3 weeks, and I bought some lighter-weight shoes, but after that point I found myself more productive and engaged at work.

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I use both a standing desk and a sitting one, and agree with you on the three-week burn-in.

But while the benefits of standing desks are plausible, it is very important to remember that they have an unequivocal, well-documented, peer-reviewed, scientifically solid set of risks associated with them: http://www.hazards.org/standing/

That is, there are well-documented health issues with standing all day, and of course, putting desk after standing doesn't change the physics or the physiology of the process. This does not mean your standing desk or mine will kill us, just that it's worth paying attention to any potential downsides developing.

> there are well-documented health issues with standing all day

It's almost as if we are all going to die eventually no matter what we do.

I agree. Luckily my job doesn't require to be only at my desk to be productive. I really feel better the more I just move during the day. Standing in one position is exhausting; walking over to a coworker's cube instead of IMing or going on a walk instead of internet browsing adds a lot of motion.

This is why I've prematurely moved to the next trend, the stop-start-jog-walk-stand-sprint-walk-jog office desk treadmill cycle. The cycle is meant to simulate our caveman activity cycle, with a lot of walking, jogging, some waiting, and the occasional sprint from predators and towards pray. Sometimes I spill my coffee on myself when the treadmill suddenly ramps up from a walk or a stand-still to a sprint, but research shows[1] that things like spilling coffee on yourself induces a slight stress response. Which is great, since I need some authentic stress variables in order to simulate some of the stressors of my hunter-gatherer heritage.

[1] TBA; this trend is too underground right now. The research will follow soon.

Even treadmill desks are coming under fire now... it seems you just can't win.

http://www.katysays.com/junk-food-walking/

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