Is Your Office Chair Cutting Your Life Short?

A recent Businessweek article had a sobering title Your Office Chair Is Killing You, and will be of interest to those who sit for more than 8 hours a day, which means a lot of people.

It points out how humans aren’t designed to sit for hours on end. It’s only relatively recently we have all started to spend so much time sitting and this is all starting to have some nasty side effects.

From a health perspective excessive sitting encourages conditions like hypertension, obesity and high blood pressure, which is not good.

There are additional problems because all your upper body weight is concentrated on the pelvis and spine. However when we are standing and moving our weight is distributed more evenly via our legs, knees and feet.

And as if that wasn’t enough to worry about it suggests exercise won’t help much either, although I still believe doing regular exercise and stretching has to be a lot better than sitting welded in the same position all day.

One of the best forms of exercise after a busy day in the office is swimming because it allows a huge range of natural exercise for the whole body to take place in a natural supportive way.

The article concludes the best idea for sitting is to perch or sit in a semi-standing position using a height adjustable desk. Sit stand desks have long been popular in Europe and are now beginning to make inroads in the US too.

There are 2 excellent office seats which work well with this way of sitting.

First is the Capisco chair from HÅG, this seat looks kind of odd and yet it is a joy to sit in with its saddle style seat helping to encourage a healthier way of sitting.
Second is the Swopper stool which is also unconventional and has a spring loaded seat helping users to sit and move more actively.

Further Reading
The Businessweek article Your Office Chair Is Killing You
Review of the HÅG Capisco chair
Review of the Swopper stool