A Guide to Active Working in the Modern Office

Homo Sedens in the 21st Century

Robert Bridger

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429664731
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medizin
• Subtopic: Gesundheitswesen, Verwaltung & Pflege

This is a short guide on sit-stand working in the office. It reviews the research on sitting and standing at work from the 1950s to present and provides guidance for specialists, therapists, practitioners, and managers. The book is illustrated with many photos and figures, provides guidance for active working at the end of every chapter, and is understandable to the layman as well as the specialist.

With the increased emphasis on healthy lifestyles, coupled with the obesity and overweight epidemic, many are claiming that we should spend more time standing at work. Some have even claimed that sitting is the new smoking. Readers of the book will learn and understand what is behind these claims, what stacks-up, what doesn't, and be able to make informed decisions about whether to invest in new facilities, and what to invest. This book is of value to human factors specialists, physical therapists, chiropractors and occupational health practitioners, architects, and facilities managers.

Features

Explains the origins of sedentary office work

Summarizes the health risks of sitting and standing and how to avoid them

Reviews new research on active working and practical ways of developing active working habits in the office

Discusses the obesogenic workplace, and how to avoid it

Includes over 60 key points to help you decide how to be more active at work

1 Posture and Movement in Everyday Life

“When Man assumed the upright position, he immediately made an enemy of gravity and has been fighting this relentless foe ever since.”

J.A. Jones (1933) quoted in Hellebrandt and Franseen (1943)

One of the simplest ways to begin a book about being more active in the office is to start with the human body – what it is designed to do and how it works, with the emphasis on posture and movement.

Human beings are the last in a line of primates known as “hominins,” which includes extinct human species such as Neanderthals and distant ancestors such as “Australopithicus.” All were different from modern chimpanzees and gorillas in that the hominins were all well adapted to walking on two legs. Bipedalism is nothing new. One of the key differences between modern humans and other living primates is the ability to walk with the upper body in an upright position while taking long strides (Figure 1.1). The ability to do this is due, in part, to the shape of the human spine. In humans, the spine is “S”-shaped and there is a concave curve at the base of the spine (known as the “lumbar lordosis”). Five lumbar vertebrae curve inwards at the base of the spine, bending backwards to raise the upper body into an upright position over the pelvis and hip joints (Figure 1.2). The result is that the upper body is almost perfectly balanced over the bones and joints below.

Standing upright in this way is energy efficient – the energy expenditure of standing still isn’t very much greater than when sitting in a chair or lying down. Why then, has it been proposed that “sitting is the new smoking” and that we should spend more time standing at work?

Standing to work at your computer instead of sitting all day has benefits, but “burning calories” isn’t one of them.

We will explore this question in the following chapters. In this chapter, we will look at posture and movement in everyday life (when we can choose whether to stand, sit, walk or move) and how naturalistic postures differ from the postures normally adopted when we work in the office.

Humans are able to walk with a “striding gait” – we can take long strides because the hip joint of the trailing leg continues to extend as the other leg swings forwards. In fact, when we walk, we are standing on one leg more than half the time. One of the main anatomical differences in this respect between modern humans and chimpanzees and gorillas is that human beings are perfectly designed to stand on one leg – albeit for short periods of time. In a later chapter we will look at this in more detail and answer the question why, if we spend so much time standing on one leg when walking that we don’t fall to one side or sway from side to side to maintain balance? For the moment, suffice to say that we are well adapted to walk on two legs and do so by standing on one leg more than half the time.

FIGURE 1.1 Humans are built to walk on two legs (bipedalism) taking long strides in an upright stance. The “S”-shaped spine in the lumbar region supports the weight of the upper body which is transmitted directly to the pelvis, hips, and knees. Walking is energy efficient even though we spend more than half of the time standing on one leg when we walk.

FIGURE 1.2 The spine seen from the side. In the upright position, the third lumbar vertebra is directly below the center of gravity of the upper body. The back and abdominal muscles do little work to maintain the upright posture because the mass of the upper body is balanced on the lumbar spine.

Standing still is associated with a host of problems both in the short term and in the long term (leg swelling, varicose veins and arthritis in the hip joints, (Bridger, 2018)), and we will look at these problems in a later chapter and find out how to avoid them. Only people who have to stand still ever do so – guardsmen, sentries, people engaged in ceremonial work or when washing the dishes (Figure 1.3). There is a great deal of evidence that factory jobs, where people have to stand in the same place all day long are harmful and increase the risk of ill health in later life. Standing still, when it does occur in everyday life is a transitional posture that is momentarily adopted when finishing one activity and starting another – for example, when standing by the road waiting for the traffic lights to indicate that it is safe to cross.

FIGURE 1.3 Standing still is unnatural and is rarely seen in everyday life. Exceptions are jobs where people have to stand still for ceremonial reasons or as a transitional posture (e.g., when waiting for the traffic lights to indicate that it is safe to cross the road). (Source: Courtesy of Panhard: Queen’s Guard, June 13, 2009, Wikimedia Commons, cropped.)

Natural Standing

Standing upright is a constant challenge for three reasons – firstly the need to maintain balance on an unstable base with only two points of support for the body (the feet); secondly the need to avoid discomfort due to static loading of joints and muscles and thirdly the need to return blood from the lower limbs back to the heart against gravity.

Standing on two legs is the exception rather than the rule in the animal kingdom. Animals that do stand on two legs have anatomical adaptations to help them maintain balance. The long tail of the kangaroo counterbalances its upper body when it moves and acts as a third leg when it is stationary. Humans don’t have tails, so they use external objects as a third base of support to stabilize the body (Figure 1.4).

FIGURE 1.4 Standing on two legs is the exception rather than the rule in the animal kingdom. Kangaroos, although largely bipedal, use their tails as a “third leg” to achieve a tripedal standing posture that is much more stable. Humans lean against objects to increase stability and transfer some of the body weight to other parts of the body (the shoulder in this example). Standing still with the arms dangling by the sides is uncomfortable. Folding the arms and crossing the legs are postural strategies that we use to close these open chains and stabilize them with friction, enabling the muscles to relax. (Source: Kangaroo photo by Blacktator from Pexels.

In humans, the lumbar lordosis (the inward curve of the lower back in the lumbar region) supports the weight of the upper body in an energy efficient way. When people stand for a long time, fatigue, when it occurs, is not due to increased energy expenditure but compression of soft tissues and pooling of blood in the lower legs. Typically, people use postural strategies to stabilize themselves and avoid discomfort as in Figure 1.4.

Things People Do When Standing Naturally

1. Never stand still

2. Shift body weight on one leg

3. Lean backwards against anything

4. Lean sideways against a vertical surface

5. Rest hip against counters

6. Maximize contact with fixed objects

7. Use arms as props resting elbows on a surface

8. Place one foot on a raised surface

9. Use thoracic support (e.g., lean on a broom)

10. Hang on elbows

11. Rest upper body on a counter

12. Place hands on hips or in pockets

13. Sit on heels against a wall

14. Use a footrest

15. Sit down whenever possible

16. Extend footprint

17. Rest chin on hand

18. Rest knee on surface

19. Rest hands on knees

20. Fold arms, cross legs at the ankles (list taken from Bridger et al., 1994).

At work, the opportunity to use these strategies, to stand and move naturally, is diminished due to the demands of the work and the design of the furniture. This is one of the reasons, although not the only one, why sedentary work became so common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It wasn’t practical to expect thousands of office workers to stand still all day doing clerical work.

Gravity won and the seated work position became the norm.

Avoiding Discomfort

The heaviest load most of us will ever have to carry in our entire lives is our own body. In everyday life people use postural strategies to minimize the load, particularly the load on the joints, and also to minimize the effort required to move and carry out tasks.

We can think of posture, as the way we carry ourselves. So the postures we adopt everyday can have a very large effect on the effort we have to expend in performing daily activities. Posture also has a very large effect on the forces that act on the muscles and joints of the body, including those of the spine. Posture is all about body mechanics.

So, what is a “good posture”?

The short answer is that there is no “good” posture. All postures in daily life impose compressive and tensile stresses on tissues and interfere with the flow of blood to some tissues and not others. This explains why most people, when left to their own devices, make small postural adjustments all the time.

But some postures are better than others – the “better” postures enable us to carry ourselves efficiently, expending the minimum of effort as we do so, without unnecessary strain. In daily life, we are normally completely unaware of our posture and how the body automatically adapts to the demands we place on it.

Standing Still (Or Trying To)

When we stand still with our feet together, the body is like an inverted pendulum. It is a tall structure with a narrow base of support. The center of gravity of the body lies at more than half its total height. Two sets of reflexes act to keep us upright. The antigravity reflexes are essential for upright posture. They contract to “brace” the joints against gravity. A second set of postural reflexes controls the positions of the various body parts in relation to each other (postural fixation of limbs, for example) and the posture of the whole body itself.

Some quadrupedal animals can “lock” their limbs to achieve stability at little energy cost (apparently, this is one reason why horses can sleep standing up).

In humans, stability is achieved dynamically. Viewed from the side, the anterior and posterior muscles of the body (those at the front and the back) act to keep the center of gravity (COG) of the body within the small base of support defined by the position of the feet. Foot position is a criti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Author Biography
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Posture and Movement in Everyday Life
• Chapter 2 Why Do We Sit in the Office? Seating as a Solution
• Chapter 3 Are We Built to Sit? Sitting as a Problem
• Chapter 4 Physical Activity in Everyday Life: Demographic Change in the 21st Century
• Chapter 5 Are We Built to Stand? Problems with Standing at Work and How to Avoid Them
• Chapter 6 Standing as a Solution: Benefits of Becoming More Active at Work
• Chapter 7 Bad Habits Versus Active Workplaces
• Chapter 8 Choosing Products for Active Office Work
• Chapter 9 The Future of Office Work
• References
• Index