Standing desks became a fixture of office culture on a fairly simple pitch: sitting all day is bad for you, so stand instead. A decade and a fair amount of research later, the honest answer is more modest than the pitch — standing instead of sitting doesn’t burn much more energy, and standing all day brings its own problems, from foot pain to circulatory strain.
What the research actually supports is alternation. Bodies do better with position changes throughout the day than with any single “correct” posture held for eight hours straight, sitting or standing. The desk that adjusts is more useful than the desk that’s simply tall.
The bigger win, it turns out, had less to do with the desk and more to do with the habit it encouraged: getting up. A short walk every hour does more for how you feel by 5 p.m. than any furniture choice does on its own.
