Everyone has read or heard about articles claiming, “sitting increases your chances of early death.” While seemingly sensationalist, they are basically true, but that’s too intangible to be useful. When you’re thinking about the actual, concrete health benefits of an adjustable computer table, it’s more helpful to know exactly how your body reacts to sitting and what that adjustable electric desk stops and prevents. Plus, there is a lot of surprising adverse health effects caused by sitting.

The basic effects of sitting stem from the fact that very little of your body below your mid torso is actually doing anything. It’s all resting. Immediately after you sit down, electrical activity in your core and leg muscles slows down as the muscles relax. Your body’s calorie consumption begins to slow and if you remain sedentary without moving for about an hour, it reaches a floor of about one calorie per minute. Your heart rate also drops, and some data suggests that all these decreases in activity actually precipitate or at least are correlated with a minor decrease in electrical activity in the brain. And over time, these decreases in activity become more permanent, which is part of what increases your likelihood of chronic illness.

When you don’t use your muscles, your body allows them to atrophy to save energy. Why would you want big, energy-consuming muscles just sitting there, doing nothing except eating up your resources? This includes the major components in movement – hamstrings, quadriceps, the gluteus – they all atrophy. And when you spend more than four hours a day sitting, at least five days a week, that’s a lot of signals to your body to get worse at standing and walking

Furthermore, those muscles and the tendons around them also shorten, tighten, and harden. When you are sitting, your hamstrings and hips are in a shortened position. They adapt to that, which affects your ability to exercise and even hold your body erect while standing. This contributes to future pain, discourages physical activity, and makes injuring yourself while doing something simple like moving boxes more likely.

But there’s more. Moving and stimulating muscle contraction also encourages blood flow back to the heart, helping your body remove toxins from your extremities consistently and preventing the buildup of fluid. If you do it for long periods of time without moving, you body has to process all that stuff in short, intense bursts, and it doesn’t all get removed.

Fortunately, if you decrease the time you spend sitting to fewer than four hours a day, and even more powerful if you move from seven or eight hours to below four hours, you can stop these effects and begin to reverse them. An adjustable computer table that lets you stand while you work is a great way to do this. Not only will you feel perceivably better in terms of your physical body, you’ll have more energy and focus because of that increased electrical activity, and you won’t be as likely to die early.

Modern life can take a toll on the human body, perhaps more so if you don’t lead an active life. By the time you reach middle age, you probably have a number of minor aches and pains, and possible a significant physical ailment of some kind. The good news is that an adjustable height desk can help relief a wide range of discomfort caused by these common pains. You will be surprised at just how much better you will feel with an electronic desk that changes from a seated position to a standing position.

The most common problems a standing desk can help solve involve issues that you develop from sitting at a computer too long: a sore lower back, tight shoulders, neck ache, tight hips, and wrist problems. The last thing you want is back problems from sitting at a desk for too long, which is why standing can help fix them.

But other issues that you may have developed along the way also respond. For example, knee and lower back injuries from sports during your younger days usually manifest themselves as aches that are especially uncomfortable by the end of the day and as you get ready for bed. This is generally the same way a knee or hip behaves, if you had surgery in the past. Your body tends to react to injury and weakness in two ways: muscles around that area get tighter to compensate for the weakness, and tendons tighten to offer extra support.

Or even if your problem is relatively minor, such as exhaustion or tightness from exercising, an electronic desk that lets you stand at work can help. When you work out hard, less worked muscles tend to step in and help compensate for tired muscles’ weakness for the rest of the next day or two. Sore muscles also get tight while recovering unless you stretch them regularly. Both of these conditions can lead to tight hamstrings, quads, shoulders, arms, and lower back. And all of that tightness makes you uncomfortable after sitting hunched over a desk all.

These are just some of the most common reasons people have knee, hip, back, shoulder, arm, wrist, and neck pain. But the reason the specific experience translates to a reduced range of motion and physical discomfort is usually a combination of tight muscles and tendons.

When you stand up, you naturally stretch your hip flexors and your hamstrings. You also tend to hold your torso more erect, assuming your keyboard is at the right height. Just the simple act of being on your feet instead of sitting for a few hours a day, getting that extra stretching instead of leaving tight muscles and tendons in the shortened position tends to have dramatic effects on your physical comfort in as little as one day. It’s a great reason to try a standing electronic desk if you’re not feeling great.

If you think you need height adjustable desks for better ergonomics in your workplace, you might want to consider conducting an ergonomic evaluation of your office and your specific desk and space. Height adjustable tables can be part of a comprehensive solution, but you need to understand all the features of the workspace to create a truly healthier environment. Follow these steps and ask these questions to conduct a basic evaluation and identify issues that need attention.

If you are just evaluating your own workspace, start with the basics. You probably spend more than four hours a day at your desk, but you should also identify any other positions or tasks that get that level of attention from you each day. Also look for other risk factors like routine and repetitive motions that you make frequently and positions that you hold for extended periods. These risk factors give you an idea of where you need to evaluate ergonomic conditions.

Looking at your computer desk, there are a number of questions to ask, starting with your head and neck. Is the top of the screen at eye level? If it is lower than that you need to find a way to raise it up, whether you’re sitting or standing at a height adjustable desk. If you frequently look at things to the side of the monitor, how far to the side are they? Do they require you to turn your head more than 30 degrees? If so, you’re at risk of injuring your neck and putting excessive stress on your upper back by repeatedly turning your head.

Next, focus on your back and shoulders. When you sit in your chair, is your lower back supported and upright, not hunched or overly arched? If not, you need to adjust the height of your desk and get a new chair, or better yet, figure out the right height for an adjustable desk to achieve that same posture improvement. When your hands sit on the keyboard, do your elbows hang naturally at your sides, bent at slightly more than a 90-degree angle? If not, and depending on whether or not your wrists are supported, change the height of your keyboard and chair.

You can conduct this same analysis in other parts of your office, such as around the copy machine, where repetitive motions are common. Look for where shelves and supplies are positioned relative to the place where the worker would stand and evaluate how much stretching, reaching, turning, bending, and crouching are necessary. Although an adjustable desk won’t help, moving things to reduce repetitive motions and make them more comfortable will create a more ergonomic workspace.

Even if you are completely confident that height adjustable desks will make for a more ergonomic and healthy computer workspace, it is important to conduct this simple evaluation. If you take the time to identify risk factors and work patterns that are not ergonomically healthy, you can make the basic adjustments necessary to keep yourself healthy.

If you adopt an adjustable table at work, you are going to spend a lot more time on your feet. This is good for your overall health, but you do need the right footwear to get the most out of ergonomic adjustable desks. Spending several hours standing is not easy on your leg and back muscles. Just ask any waitress. So here are some tips to protect your feet and make your legs and lower back just a bit more comfortable now that you’ve adopted a healthier work style with a standing desk.

The most important thing is to have a pair of comfortable shoes that provide adequate, even support. Think about the kind of shoes nurses wear. They look vaguely athletic, although without the thick, sporty heel padding of expensive trainers. Nurses favor their utilitarian, reliable, and supportive design because they minimize aches and pains while spending all day on your feet. Although most professionals cannot commit the fashion crime of wearing such practical, unattractive shoes, we can draw inspiration from nurse shoes to identify more ergonomic options.

High heels, for example, are not good for those who want to spend a large portion of their work day standing. They force the feet into an unnatural posture and also put a disproportionate amount of the body’s weight on the toes and ball of the feet, instead of distributing it evenly. But there are sensible alternatives to high heels, including lower heels and flats, that offer a compromise between style and ergonomics. Shoes that have wider, shorter heels, don’t have a narrow, crowded, pointy toe box, and are made of soft, conforming, natural leather afford a number of benefits for women’s feet. And if sensible shoes are not an option for when you walk in the door, keep a pair of work-appropriate healthy shoes at your desk to wear while you’re standing at your desk.

Men have it slightly easier, because the average men’s dress shoe requires only a few minor changes to be foot-healthy and perfect for standing at an adjustable table. Good choices provide arch support, distribute weight evenly throughout the foot, and keep the foot close to the ground – just like those nurse shoes do. The most important thing to do when looking for healthy men’s work shoes is to actually try the shoes on and walk around in them. This makes buying a new pair of shoes online more difficult, but it’s worth it if they are actually healthier.

The other option is a fatigue pad. It is similar to a rug that you place on the workspace to soften the ground and make standing more comfortable. It decreases the floor’s impact on leg muscles and joints, which further helps create an ergonomic workspace.

An adjustable desk is a huge step in the right direction and will certainly make you healthier and happier, and probably more productive. But if you’re going to change your routine and spend a number of hours on your feet, you owe it to yourself to invest in some healthier shoes to protect your legs and joints.

Ergonomic adjustable desks that let you work standing up are a great start for spinal and general health in the workplace. If you’re going to spend seven hours clicking around for work, the least thing you can do is not put your body into a coma by sitting the entire time. But you can do more, complimenting your ergonomic adjustable table with proper lighting. In fact, lighting and establishing proper distance between your face and the computer screen is the most important thing you can do at work for the health of your eyes.

The average desk lamp combined with mediocre ceiling lights are not enough to protect your eyes. The problem is that a computer monitor’s strong light creates a harsh contrast that can strain and injure the eyes. Other common, computer-related lighting problems include glair, other harsh lighting contrasts such as windows behind the computer, unnatural lighting tones that increase strain, and general eye fatigue. There are a number of simple steps you can take to create a more ergonomically lit work environment.

First, keep in mind the general idea that you want warm, even, natural light diffused throughout the area around your computer to create less contrast. The easiest way to do this is to start by setting up your desk so you computer is perpendicular to a natural light source. Natural sunlight diffusing through a window creates the perfect amount of lighting during the day. You can supplement this with a few artificial lighting options that are especially necessary when it’s dark outside.

The first is a floor lamp – not some awkward, halogen ceiling lights that create glare on the monitor, and not a narrow, desk spotlight, but a conventional floor lamp that will flood the room with warm, even lighting. If that’s not an option you can use a lamp at your desk, but it needs to be an older style room lamp that throws soft light across your entire desk and behind the monitor, not just one bar of light beaming down onto the screen. If you have to use an adjustable desk lamp, the pros say it should be roughly 15 inches above the desk and aimed to create even lighting.

After that, other options include under-shelf lighting and more advanced tools like specialized bias lighting that synchronizes with the colors on the screen to control overall contrast. But if you take the basic steps above, the only remaining task to get the most out of your adjustable desk is changing your habits.

No matter how good your lighting or how effective ergonomic adjustable desks are, you should also take breaks. For the eyes, use the 20-20-20 rule; for every 20 minutes of work staring at a screen, spend 20 seconds looking at something at least 20 feet away. For the rest of your body, take a five-minute walk around the office to get a drink of water once every 45 minutes or hour or so. Giving your entire body a short chance to reset will increase focus and productivity, as well as protect your body. You will feel better and more productive when you combine breaks with effective lighting and an ergonomic desk.