Sitting Is Bad

The likelihood is that you are comfortably nestled into the comprehensively created furrows of your swivel chair as you read this article – but already I have inadvertently contradicted myself in the first sentence.

My crime?

Using the word ‘comfortably’.

An ominous picture of a chair.
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Although you may appear to be at one with your workstation, almost literally in fact, as you slouch lackadaisically into it, your sitting desk is not doing you a just service both physically and mentally. There are many detrimental effects of sitting down for long periods of time and if your chosen vocation revolves around an office environment then you probably find yourself having to sit for prolonged periods of time.

Physiological Effects

Physiologically this is bad for you in terms of potentially developing a number of serious physical ailments. Firstly, your back will slowly but surely begin to weaken, which will increase the chances of acute back pains and problems such as sciatica, disc disorders, lumbago et al, and you’ll probably agree that your time could be more productively spent without having to make regular sojourns to your friendly, neighborhood osteopath. And hand in hand with sitting for lengthy durations comes an unhealthy posture which will eventually see you staggering around the office groaning ‘the bells, the bells’, which is not conducive to winning any workplace popularity competitions.

On a more serious note, sitting down all day can tend to promote the onset of obesity which kills more people than smoking does. After a hearty lunch and subsequently heading back to your desk for another good few hours of extreme sitting, you will burn very few calories, a fact which your expanding waistline can testify to. Obesity can cause heart problems and strokes and will generally shorten your existence – so stand up and be counted if you want to live a longer life.

Psychological Effects

From a psychological point of view, sitting for long periods of time also has numerous adverse affects. For one, whilst sat down your blood flow is restricted and therefore so are your juices of creativity. If you were to stand whilst working, which increases the rate at which the blood circulates, you would be promoting a clearer head and improved productivity in turn.

Sitting is also conducive to adding fatigue to your working day. These feelings of unmerited exhaustion are again the result of limited blood circulation and the fact that you are essentially remaining stationary for the best part of the day can lead to sensations of staleness which may even intensify into a depression of sorts.

In summary, sitting whilst working is bad for your back, your heart and your physical well-being in general. It also limits your productivity and doesn’t bode so well for a happy worker; I’m sure you’ve made your commute home on a number of occasions feeling almost grey with stagnancy. This can purely be put down to the way in which you choose to go about your daily tasks – that of sitting, followed by slouching, and subsequently a monumental slump into your workstation.

Switching to a Standing Desk, or a Treadmill Desk, will almost instantly help alleviate these mental and physical woes.