I recently came across this article:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/stand-up-while-you-read-this/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_desk

Gonna try to go for a week without a chair and see if it makes a difference.

Anyone have experience using Standing Desks over a long period of time?

There are a lot of people that stand in my office but I haven't given it a try yet.

Amazing - must be a progressive company!

I'm finding it useful for doing some yoga stretches while thinking about how to implement my next algorithms. I can feel my posture improving already - shoulders and wrists seem to be better, too...

To get things going, I have just raised my monitors to eye-level by using a stack of books.

Also, I am walking around bare feet - feels funny going low-tech/high-tech simultaneously!

If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of ... diabetes

No you're not! I really (REALLY) hate people who try to say that eating sugar and being lazy will give you diabetes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes_mellitus_type_2#Cause

Until, of course, others researchers found out that standing up while working increases the chance of [insert some scary 21st century diseases here] by 12.34% or whatever :s

No you're not! I really (REALLY) hate people who try to say that eating sugar and being lazy will give you diabetes.

But it will probably make you fat. :)

Let's see standing up all day at at the office I see problems with:

- Blisters, because you know it's more important to have shoes that look good then ones that are comfortable\functional.

- Fallen Arches pretty much self explainitory.

- (In the VERY long term) Hip Dysplasia from shifting your weight side to side for decades on end along with terrible posture.

- (Possible?) Sciatica again from piss poor posture. It's more common then people think.

So yeah, I'll take fat and lazy over productive and crippled thank you.

EDIT: I'd just like to add that if your office were to encourage this in any kind of way you'd see about 90% of the people just leaning on their desk anyway. Also I don't know what kind of people this study is using but standing up for 9-14 hours a day doesn't change my heart rate in the least bit.

I can only imagine how tired I would be when I got home after standing up all day. Sounds pretty horrible.

It's call a chair. They make them tall, too. ;) You don't stand the entire shift...your desk is just high enough that you can stand at it and work as an option.

I'm going to see about ordering a tall chair and then I'll give it a try.

Ah, I see. It does sound a lot better now :)

I've noticed that better posture DOES help me think better, maybe this is the key as opposed to standing all day?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes_mellitus_type_2#Cause

If you read that section carefully....

wikipedia wrote:
those who had high levels of physical activity, a healthy diet, did not smoke, and consumed alcohol in moderation had an 82% lower rate of diabetes. When a normal weight was included, the rate was 89% lower

It just highlights a correlation. But as we all know, correlation does not imply causation:
http://xkcd.com/552/

I did use one for a while, I don't remember exactly how long, like a month or month and a half? Well anyway, it does make you tired, and it helped with me going to bed at night, I don't use one anymore cause I have a netbook and so I would have to be looking down while standing up...

Has anyone tried these?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneeling_chair
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_chair

Lie down (or work less hours)

But as we all know, correlation does not imply causation

At first I thought that you call something a causation when you understand it and a correlation when you don't, which is a crappy definition since understanding is immeasurable. However, now it seems to me that perhaps the only difference between causation and correlation is how fast you see the consequences.
Anyway, my point is that in medicine pretty much everything is a correlation. I don't see how replacing that "will" with "is likely to" would make anything better.

As for the original topic, my father uses one at home. He seems satisfied..

hamsterman wrote:
Anyway, my point is that in medicine pretty much everything is a correlation.

It's really true - sometimes, it's even studies done incorrectly.

In the US, it used to be that fats were bad for you. Now, sugars are worse for you than fats.
It used to be that too much salt is bad for you; a more recent study seems to show more salt seems to be ok, but not enough salt causes serious problems.

Standing or sitting, you can try them all, but all things in moderation, and make sure you listen to your own body.

@hamsterman,
I don't understand what you mean. Two variables correlate when they have a non-zero pmcc ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_product-moment_correlation_coefficient ). If r < 0 there is a negative correlation and if r > 0 there is a positive one. The "strength" of the correlation depends on how negative or how positive; if r = -1 there is a strong negative correlation and if r = 1 there is a strong postive one.

Causation is just to do with things causing other things; if you apply enough heat to water, it boils, hence heat causes boiling in water.

Bringing the two terms together, "correlation does not imply causation" means that just because two variables correlate, doesn't mean one caused the other. As an (untrue) example, the number of people that have 6 fingers has increased since 1950. The amount of pollution in the air has also increased since 1950, at more or less the same rate. But it would be a fallacy to say that pollution causes people to have 6 fingers, just based on that (observational) evidence.

@chrisname
I'm not defining correlation in my paragraph. I'm wondering when can a correlation be called a causation.
Your boiling water example is a causation because it has been tested a lot and because the affect of applying heat to water is seen immediately.
Your finger example is not considered a causation because it has only been observed once (there might have been many fingers, but only one increase in pollution) and because it may (or may not) take years for pollution to reach and affect people.
Consider an example where every few years some environmental disaster happens and several people immediately pop a new finger. I assume that would be called a causation.

Though we're derailing the thread here..

I don't think that proves causation. Even if every time A happens, B happens too, you can't prove that A causes B just on that premise. What if α causes A and B? It's probable that A is causing B, but it's not proven. To prove it, you would have to show that A has a direct effect on B; e.g. an environmental disaster (A) that causes genetic mutations in people, causing their children to grow with an extra finger (B). To prove that A caused B you could show that the environmental disaster released radiation and that the radiation can cause a mutation in DNA (e.g. how particles released by radioactive decay can damage tumor supressor genes and cause cancer).

Edit: even then I think it would be unproven actually. I think you would have to isolate any other causes (e.g. remove the possiblity of α occurring) and then show that B still happens when A happens.