Stand more is the take away message here. It’s more positive than saying don’t sit too much.
It’s not a new idea. Here’s a picture of Hemingway working at his stand up desk in the fifties.
I found the picture at kottke.com which also links to an interesting article on standup desks and why they’re good for you.
I’ve been using a standup desk for a couple of years now and like it.
You don’t need an expensive standup desk but there are some nice ones out there. I just use a small rectangular stool from our kitchen table which I put on top of my desk. It’s easy to set up and easy to breakdown when I’m done.
There’s lots of evidence that standing more is an easy to implement habit with a big health pay off. Read the article at thewireutter.com if you want to go deeper, it has most of what I’ve run across before corralled together in that one article.
One thing that’s interesting is how independent of other factors standing can be when it comes to your health. For instance Winston Churchill who smoked and drank a lot was also a standup desk user. And he lived ’til he was 90.
Even if you don’t want to use a standup desk, just interrupting prolonged bouts of sitting with five minutes of standing and moving a little every half hour or so will help. Turns out you don’t have to stand all the time – you just need to stand more.