Health and movement · 1 min read
Adjustable desks reduced sitting time by almost an hour
Added to a program to sit less, across 24 workplaces and 630 employees. A combined metabolic-risk measure showed no firm change.
The study, in plain language
A desk job can involve sitting nearly all day. To see what changed, researchers randomized 24 workplaces to two strategies: a program with organizational changes and advice to reduce sedentary time, or the same support plus adjustable workstations for alternating between sitting and standing.
After one year, adding desks reduced sitting time by almost an hour per eight-hour workday compared with the program without desks. There was no firm group difference in light activity or the combined metabolic-risk measure. In an additional, unplanned look at 95 workers with prediabetes or diabetes, some measures showed a more favorable pattern. Participants were relatively healthy full-time workers, and 143 of the 630 did not contribute the primary data at the end.
The key idea
Adding adjustable desks to a workplace program reduced sitting time, but there was no firm change in the metabolic-risk measure.
Something to think about
If you work at a desk, how long do you sit before changing position? Here, adjustable desks shortened sitting time, but did not clearly change an overall metabolic-health measure.
The original study
Efficacy of the ‘Stand and Move at Work’ multicomponent workplace intervention to reduce sedentary time and improve cardiometabolic risk: a group randomized clinical trial
Source under CC BY 4.0. English adaptation and explanation by PaperFlow, with AI assistance. The text has been reorganized for a general audience; it is not the complete paper and does not imply endorsement by its authors.
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