Target Audience and Goal Statement:
Cardiologists, internists, family medicine specialists, primary care physicians, exercise physiologists, and orthopedic specialists
The goal was to compare the benefits of various active workstations — standing, cycling, and walking (treadmill) — with regard to biomechanical, physiological, and psychobiological outcomes, and work performance.
Question Addressed:
How do three types of active workstations compare in a range of parameters, including biomechanical, physiological, and psychobiological outcomes?
Study Synopsis and Perspective:
Compared with standing desks, cycling and treadmill workstations burned slightly more calories and were associated with a marginal blood pressure drop, according to a meta-analysis of 12 studies.
Action Points
Writing online in Occupational & Environmental Medicine, Marie-Eve Mathieu, PhD, of the University of Montreal, and colleagues reported that cycling with 20-30 W resistance led to a doubling of the metabolic equivalent (MET) in energy expended compared with standing desks. Similarly, treadmills set at 1-1.5 mph raised the energy expenditure by 1 MET.
Blood pressure was similar between standing and treadmill groups in one study included in the meta-analysis; the other study that assessed blood pressure showed that ambulatory systolic blood pressure fell by 1-2 mm Hg when overweight people cycled at 20 W and/or walked at 1 mile/hour on the treadmill during daytime work hours, and by 8-9 mm Hg in the late afternoon-evening.
A 5- to 12-bpm increase in heart rate was observed among people working on a treadmill going 1.5-2 mph or cycling with 30 W resistance. Going slower at these stations, however, produced no elevation in heart rate than if the person had just been at a standing desk, the researchers reported.
They concluded that cycling and treadmill workstations appear to provide greater short-term physiological changes than standing workstations that could potentially lead to better health.
Cycling, treadmill, and standing workstations all appear to show short-term productivity benefits, while treadmill workstations reduce the performance of computer-related work.
The meta-analysis involved 12 studies that generally included a few dozen people each. Investigators for these studies had assessed the interventions for no more than a workday at a time.
“The benefits associated with each type of active workstation (e.g., standing, treadmill, cycling) may not be equivalent,” Mathieu and co-authors wrote. “Overall, cycling and treadmillworkstations appear to provide greater short-term physiological changes than standing workstations that could potentially lead to better health.”
One caveat for the active workstations is that they were associated with slower typing, as well as slower and less accurate computer mouse pointing, the researchers noted.
Regarding other work performance, perceived accuracy declined with the low-intensity treadmill compared with the low-intensity cycling workstation, in one study. Notably, none of four studies found differences between the three types of active workstations (standing, treadmill, and cycling) in selective attention, the team said. “Moreover, divided attention and short-term auditory verbal memory revealed no differences between standing, treadmill, and cycling workstations.”
One study considered psychobiological outcomes, evaluating level of arousal, boredom, stress, and task satisfaction. The authors noted that treadmill workstations increased arousal compared with standing, as well as cycling compared with standing. Boredom decreased with treadmill and cycling workstations compared with standing, and stress scores showed that treadmill workstations reduced stress compared with standing.
Source Reference: Occupational & Environmental Medicine, online Jan 28, 2019; DOI: 10.1136/oemed-2018-105397
Study Highlights: Explanation of Findings
Cycling and treadmill workstations appear to provide greater short-term physiological changes than standing workstations that could potentially lead to better health. Cycling, treadmill, and standing workstations appear to show productivity benefits while treadmill workstations seem to reduce the performance of work-related use of computers. Cycling was the only active workstation that decreased diastolic blood pressure. “Although cardiometabolic benefits accompany 20-30 W of resistance, a lower intensity (i.e., 5 W) does not provide any advantages over standing or treadmill conditions,” the authors noted. “Also, bouts of 10 min/hour using a cycling workstation are not enough to reverse the negative effects of prolonged sitting time on lower limb endothelial dysfunction.”
Cycling workstations increase arousal and reduce boredom significantly better than standing workstations, Mathieu, and co-authors wrote. “These outcomes are relevant as research has reported an interaction between level of physical activity at work, well-being at work, and work productivity.”
One study, for example, showed that cycling workstations could increase short-term memory and attention more effectively than standing or treadmill workstations.
The researchers also found that use of treadmills versus standing workstations decreased systolic blood pressure, whereas no difference was evident for diastolic blood pressure. Treadmills can also reduce task stress and feelings of boredom, and raise feelings of task satisfaction, one study found. However, executive motor task function, such as typing or mouse pointing, decreased with treadmill workstations.
Finally, while standing workstations do not exceed a sedentary threshold (i.e., energy expenditure), they do improve postprandial glycemia excursion and blood pressure compared with seated workstations, and prevent back injury seen with extended sitting, the team said.
Some experts, however, were critical of the studies considered in this meta-analysis: “Understanding the true effects of interacting with these workstations would take weeks, months, or even years,” said Susan Kotowski, PhD, of the University of Cincinnati College of Allied Health Sciences, who was not involved with the study. “Some of the immediate physiological and psychobiological results found could be amplified over time, could decrease, or could even disappear as an individual adapts to the workstation. An hour or a day is nowhere near long enough to understand what is truly happening.”
“It’s great that scientists are looking into these alternative types of workstations, but drawing conclusions in terms of the clinical significance of these findings based on the given data would be premature and a disservice to the community,” Kotowski added.
Still, the “soft benefits” that Mathieu’s group attribute to treadmill and cycling workstations are “reassuring,” commented Chip Lavie, MD, of the John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute in New Orleans, who was also not involved with the study. “What people really care about are ‘hard events,’ like heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, cardiovascular deaths, and all-cause mortality. Obviously, this is not available.”
“In a perfect world, everyone would be exercising 30 to 45 minutes most days and limiting sitting time to <6-8 hours per day and avoiding sitting for more than 30 minutes straight,” he told MedPage Today. “This is far from the case, so any efforts to increase physical activity and reduce sedentary time are good ideas.”
Last Updated February 01, 2019
Primary Source
Occupational & Environmental Medicine
Secondary Source
MedPage Today
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