Everything science knows right now about standing desks

A proud moment for me this week as one of our former students is getting some great press for a systematic review she published with colleagues Dany MacDonald and Jamie Burr.  The review, published by Brittany MacEwen in the journal Preventive Medicine, looked at all the research on active workstations (treadmill and standing desks) so far. The review is impressive, even moreso given that it was written by an undergraduate student, and published in a very solid journal.

Here are review's key findings:

Treadmill desks led to the greatest improvement in physiological outcomes including postprandial glucose, HDL cholesterol, and anthropometrics, while standing desk use was associated with few physiological changes. Standing and treadmill desks both showed mixed results for improving psychological well-being with little impact on work performance.

If you're interested in the latest findings on active workstations, I strongly suggest you check out the review itself.  If you'd like a quick summary, pop over to Fast Company Design, where they highlight all the key findings.  For those keen to know more about active workstations, Brittany followed up the review with a very interesting intervention study which I hope to summarize here in the near future.

This story is republished courtesy of PLOS Blogs: blogs.plos.org.