Health Active workplaces
How desk bikes, treadmills, etc. influence thinking performance
Status: 15.04.2024 | Reading time: 3 minutes
Work and move at the same time: a treadmill under the desk makes it possible
Quelle: picture alliance/photothek/Thomas Trutschel
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Anyone who sits a lot is damaging to their health. Desk bikes, treadmills and height-adjustable tables are intended to counteract this. Researchers have now investigated how such active workplaces promote work performance – and even affect memory.
A desk combined with a treadmill or stepper not only reduces sedentary behavior but can also improve brain performance. At least that’s what a US study suggests, the results of which were published in the “Journal of the American Heart Association”. A height-adjustable standing desk also helps. The only disadvantage of an active workstation: the typing speed could suffer somewhat.
Whether in the car, in front of the television or especially at work in the office: many people spend too many hours of the day sitting. Just last year, a report from the German Sports University Cologne and the German Health Insurance (DKV) showed that people in this country sit an average of 9.2 hours on weekdays, and for 18 to 29 year olds it is more than ten hours a day.
These numbers are alarming because it has long been known that sitting for long periods of time is unhealthy. As early as 1953, a study showed that bus drivers in London who sat a lot for work had a significantly higher risk of heart attacks than ticket inspectors who moved more.
“Sitting is the new smoking”
Since then, numerous studies have shown how much lack of exercise affects life expectancy and overall health. For example, for a study published in 2012, Australian researchers examined the effects of daily sitting time on all-cause mortality using health data from around 200,000 Australian citizens over the age of 45. In this group, those who sat for 11 hours a day had a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who sat for less than four hours.
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“Sitting is the new smoking when it comes to cardiovascular health, and office workers may spend a large portion of their eight-hour workday sitting in front of a computer screen and keyboard,” explains Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, in a statement Notice. As part of a randomized clinical trial, he and his team investigated how physical exercise can be combined with the required time at the desk and what effects this has on the quality of work.
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To do this, the research group had 44 test subjects work in different working environments on four consecutive days: on one day they sat in the traditional manner, on another day they used height-adjustable standing desks or desks that were combined with a treadmill or stepper.
On each day, participants’ neurocognitive functions were analyzed using eleven different tests. These tests measured, among other things, logical thinking, short-term memory and concentration. Fine motor skills were also assessed using an online typing speed test and other experiments.
In fact, neither standing nor moving on the treadmill or stepper had a negative effect on the subjects’ cognitive abilities – on the contrary: if they repeatedly used the active work stations, their brain functions improved or remained the same. Although her typing speed became slightly slower, her typing accuracy did not deteriorate.
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The study also found that logical thinking was improved in those who sometimes stood, walked or used the stepper while working compared to those who only worked while sitting. For Lopez-Jimenez, this is proof that there are ways to spend long workdays in front of a screen while staying productive and mentally sharp. He concludes: “Our results suggest that it is possible to combine exercise with office work that was previously done while sitting.”
With preventable chronic diseases, ways should be found to combine exercise and office work, emphasizes Lopez-Jimenez: “We would do well to consider an active workplace in the prevention and treatment of diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.”