{"id":39659,"date":"2015-04-30T11:15:31","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T15:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/?p=39659"},"modified":"2021-09-01T07:51:41","modified_gmt":"2021-09-01T11:51:41","slug":"news-benefits-of-standing-desk-concentration-043015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/tech\/news-benefits-of-standing-desk-concentration-043015\/","title":{"rendered":"Standing Desks Help Improve Concentration"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Standing
Photo: Pond5<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Headlines have been announcing it for years now: Sitting is the new smoking. And it\u2019s not all hype. Studies<\/a> show that even for active adults, prolonged sitting is linked to health conditions like diabetes, heart disease and cancer. But what if sitting also affects how your brain functions? New research<\/a> from the Texas A&M Health Science Center found that students who used standing desks were more attentive in class compared to students who sat.<\/p>\n

RELATED:<\/strong> 9 Easy Yoga Poses to Help You Survive Work, Stress and Travel<\/a><\/p>\n

Whether you\u2019re in school yourself, or just feel<\/em> as fidgety as a fifth-grader, here\u2019s why you might want to reconsider spending your days desk-bound. In a new yearlong study of almost 300 Texas schoolchildren, researchers compared student behavior in classes outfitted with standing desks to those with seated desks. The standing desks had stools that allowed students to sit or stand as they desired.<\/p>\n

During the fall and spring, research assistants assigned an engagement score to each student, which was calculated by averaging their number of on-task and off-task behaviors during class. For example, on-task behaviors included raising a hand, answering a question, or having an attentive posture. Off-task behaviors included making disruptive sounds, unauthorized comments, touching other students or playing with objects not related to academic work. Each student was observed once in the fall and once in the spring. The purpose: To determine whether standing desks curb classroom chaos.<\/p>\n

Standing at Attention<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cThe antidote to sitting is movement,\u201d Dr. Bendon says. \u201cThe best posture you can be in is your next one.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, were students less likely to be slinging spitballs when given a standing desk? The study revealed that children using standing desks were roughly 12 percent more attentive than their sitting peers. This translates to roughly seven more minutes of engaged learning per hour, according to researchers. \u201cWhen children who are normally unruly and distracting are suddenly on-task, the whole class benefits,\u201d says Dr. Mark Benden, study author and associate professor at the Texas A&M Health Science Center. He notes that this spillover effect means teachers can spend less time and energy on classroom management \u2014\u00a0and more on teaching.<\/p>\n

Notably, one group of students seemed to benefit more than others, Dr. Bendon says. Overweight children using standing desks \u201cwere significantly more engaged than their obese peers in the control classrooms,\u201d he says. In a previous study, Dr. Benden\u2019s team established that standing desks helped students burn 15 percent more calories over five consecutive school days, too.<\/p>\n

RELATED:<\/strong> 17 Tips from Fit Mom Bloggers on Finding Time to Exercise<\/a><\/p>\n

Currently, most American youngsters don\u2019t have access to standing workstations. \u201cThere are schools in New Zealand, Australia and England where they\u2019re using adjustable desks,\u201d says Dr. Bendon. \u201cThe challenge for schools is, can you afford to spend $500 on a desk?\u201d Normal classroom chairs, he says, are not primarily designed to be ergonomic. \u201cThey were designed for the janitors,\u201d he says, explaining that the backwards slant of the plastic seat and backrest make them optimized for easy stacking.<\/p>\n

\u201cYears from now, I believe people will look back<\/a> on this generation of equipment and say, \u2018What were we thinking?\u2019\u201d Dr. Bendon says. He believes more and more researchers will be open to studying the mental benefits of standing workstations in an office setting, though he notes that it can be difficult to assess and compare productivity across workers.<\/p>\n

The key, he says, is to create environments where people have permission to move<\/em>. \u201cThe antidote to sitting is movement,\u201d Dr. Bendon says. \u201cThe best posture you can be in is your next one. It\u2019s that constant change.\u201d Time to take a stand, for our bodies and our brains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Should standing desks move from office buildings to schools? One study suggests they could boost attentiveness in students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":39663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,10],"tags":[202,144,251,347,366,167],"class_list":["post-39659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gear-gadgets","category-tech","tag-brain","tag-injury","tag-news","tag-tax1family","tag-tax2family-fitness","tag-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyburn.com\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}