You may have heard before how sitting down for too long can take its toll when it comes to your health. This is undeniably true. The problem is that, with the advances in technology, most jobs are becoming sedentary. It doesn’t matter whether you are working from home or in an office, the chances are that you are spending most of your days sitting down and staring at a computer screen.
Staring at the screen has many of its disadvantages too, but that is the story for some other time. Besides, most of these disadvantages are nowadays common knowledge. On the other hand, you may not even realize all of the bad ways the sedentary job has influenced your health and lifestyle. To find out what they are, to make sure you avoid all of them and decide to stand at work, keep reading!
Lowered risk of obesity
Sitting down for 8 hours a day means not being active for 8 hours a day. If you add to this occasional snacks or some emotional eating due to the constant stress, you get a lot of unnecessary pounds. If besides that, you sit even more after you've done with the work, you are bound to have trouble with weight. Not only will you lack the physical activity, but your metabolism will also be slowed down. On the other hand, standing will have a completely opposite effect on your weight.
Standing up at your work is definitely going to lower your risk of obesity. The change will be instant and you will notice the positive effects as soon as you switch to the standing desk. At such a desk, you’ll be active and more productive, and in great shape. For instance, you can stand for an hour and then switch to sitting for half an hour. This way, it won’t be too hard for you to endure, especially if you’re just now transitioning to this form of working. If you make sure to nail the height of the desk, you’ll be able to improve the benefits of a standing desk even more!
Decreased risk of cardiovascular disease
The weight is important, but there are more important things too. For instance, your health should be your number one priority. The thing with prolonged sitting down is that it can damage your health in many ways. One such instance is the increased risk of cardiovascular disease. One the other hand, if you spent less time sitting, you could significantly decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease. You'll enhance this even more if you just move around for a while.
Standing up will lower your blood sugar and cholesterol which will lead to decreasing the risk of cardiovascular disease. What standing up does successfully is decrease the levels of LDL cholesterol, and increases the HDL cholesterol levels. The latter is a good one. You can get these impressive results if you just choose to stand up for two hours at work. You don’t need more than these two hours, but it would be even better if you could manage more standing hours.
Reduced chronic back pain
If you suffer from chronic back pain, the chances are that the culprit for that is sitting down for too long. You may have spent hours and hours complaining about this severe pain without finding the solution for it. You could’ve also spent some money on massage therapies and all sorts of different remedies that could ease your pain. The good news is that you can ask professionals like Mat Shop about everything you can do to ease the pain. Your stand up desk will need a mat, and when you get one, you’ll be able to spend more work hours standing up.
Once you start your standing up journey, it will take around three months to significantly reduce the back pain. For start, you could stand up every thirty minutes and then get back to sitting. Then, you could work your way to more standing hours. When you get used to this new form, it’ll be much easier for you to endure. It will get even easier when you start experiencing all of the positive effects. Your boy and your mind will be more than grateful for this life-saving change.
Your mind will benefit too
As mentioned before, both your body and your mind will benefit from standing up at work. The benefits for the body are mostly obvious, but what may come as a surprise is that standing up can have a major impact on your mind too. When it comes to prolonged sitting down, you may not even realize that it could damage your brain structure. Namely, prolonged sitting down can be bad for your memory formation. If you had trouble with concentration or remembering lately, now you know who to blame for it.
On the bright side, you can improve the situation easily. All you need is to stand up more often at work. Because of that, getting a stand-up desk as soon as possible is far from being a bad idea. On the contrary, it's a necessary task. The thing is that you can't really reverse all of the bad treatment that you're brain has gone through. You can just stop making it worse. This is the main reason why you should switch to a stand-up desk and make the most of your brain. Your brainpower is the feature you don't want to weaken or lose and you should do your best to avoid doing so.
Improved mood and energy levels
Another thing that could lead to your brainpower being weakened is a large amount of stress. If your job is full of pressure, deadlines, and constant anxiety, sitting down won’t help you feel better. On the contrary, it could just enhance the bad feelings. You are much more likely to feel fatigued if you sit at work. Standing at work, on the other hand, increases your energy levels. That means that your mood immediately lifts and you feel much more satisfied and happier.
Once you start feeling good for a change, you will get more productive as a result. With the newfound energy and enthusiasm, you'll be able to work more effectively and successfully. You'll soon notice how creative you've become and how much easier the work can get. Soon, you’ll be the employee of the month and your health, mood, and overall well-being will be significantly improved.
Toned muscles
Another benefit of standing at work is that you can work on your muscles without even realizing it. What standing up helps is to strengthen your core muscles and leg, ankle, and foot muscles. All of these muscles are neglected when sitting down. Not only will you tone these muscles, but you will also do a lot for your posture. Problems with posture are common when it comes to sedentary jobs.
If you opt for a stand-up desk, you'll get a chance to stand with a good posture, as well as to strengthen and tone your body. It doesn't happen often that you are able to do these things and your work simultaneously. It would really be a shame to miss such a unique opportunity. All you need to do is stand up, tuck in your tailbone, push your shoulders back, strengthen your neck, and start working.
Increased your lifespan
Finally, standing at work is amazing because it can increase your lifespan. This shouldn't come as such a surprise considering all of the previous benefits. Once you reduce the risk of some serious health conditions and improve your mental health, of course, you will increase your lifespan.
You could even add more than two years to your lifespan if you just make this simple change – switch to standing at work. Not only could you prolong your life, but you could also improve the quality of that life. For instance, getting rid of the chronic back pain doesn't sound bad at all. Constant stress too can lead to burnout and some other, more serious, problems. Because of that, it's important to make the right choices and help yourself lead a better, healthier life.
Conclusion
Working is usually tiring and annoying. It can get even worse than that if it also damages your health. To make sure that you avoid that, you should do everything you can. Sometimes the change is simple and it can make everything different. If that's the case, make sure to do it.
