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 These desks are set at a height that allows students to alternate
between sitting on a stool or standing while working.
Standing desks “can interrupt sedentary behavior patterns” while
kids are in school, “simply, at a low cost, and without disrupting
classroom instruction time,” the authors of the study write in the
American Journal of Public Health.
The researchers studied third- and fourth-graders in three Texas
elementary schools and found that kids spent more time on their
feet, and slimmed down, when the standing desks were used instead of
traditional classroom desks.
Healthy weights are assessed differently in children than in adults.
Because weight and height change during growth and development,
doctors don’t simply calculate kids’ body mass index (BMI), which is
a ratio of weight to height. Instead, they compare the child’s BMI
to the BMI of other children of the same age and sex. For children,
a normal BMI can fall between the 5th and 85th percentiles – that
is, not in the bottom 5 percent or the top 15 percent among kids
their age.
The study started out with 24 teachers and 380 students. The
teachers were randomly assigned to have standing desks in their
classrooms, or regular desks.
Overall, compared to students who used regular desks for two years,
students who had standing desks in their classrooms for two years in
a row saw their BMI move 5 percentiles lower, on average.
About 80 percent of the kids started out at a normal weight, but the
researchers didn’t separate out the results in the overweight kids.
Reducing sitting time among school-age students could decrease the
inactivity linked to a range of health problems, including obesity
and diabetes, Mark Benden of the Texas A&M School of Public Health
Ergonomics Center in College Station and colleagues wrote in their
report.
“If you look at the national trends, we’re more sedentary than ever
before, and naturally that affects weight gain,” Benden told Reuters
Health.
“With the focus on state testing and academics, we’ve lost the
regular recess and physical education time in schools,” Benden said.
Standing desks bring “a difference to the classroom that doesn’t
take away from classroom time.”
Previous research has linked sedentary time to poor academic
achievement and low self-esteem in children, the research team
pointed out.
“We force kids to sit down, sit still and be quiet, and this is
unnatural for young children,” Benden said. “If we want kids to sit
less and move more, we should encourage activity in the learning
process.”
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Standing desks would help in that regard, he said.
A limitation of the experiment, Benden noted, is that during the
two-year study, some students moved to a different school or
switched classrooms.
“This study introduces the realities of the world that teachers
change and kids move in and out of schools,” said Mark Tremblay, who
studies healthy living and obesity at Children’s Hospital of Ontario
Research Institute in Ottawa, Canada.
Because we don’t know whether obese or disabled children were in the
classrooms with standing or sitting desks, the results could be
biased, said Tremblay, who wasn’t involved in the study.
Still, Tremblay said, “The findings are still encouraging. I’d say
this is a large pilot study that needs to be further explored as a
means to promote healthy living behaviors at early ages.”
Encouraging students to stand and move could help them develop
healthy habits that may impact future obesity in adulthood, said
Kermit Davis of the University of Cincinnati, Ohio who wasn’t
involved with the study. Davis researches workplace stressors,
particularly those that can stress the lower back.
“One key is not to just have students stand but also provide
postural relief (such as stools) so they can lean or sit for micro
breaks,” Davis told Reuters Health by email. “Too much sitting is
certainly bad, but the other extreme of too much standing can also
be bad.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2cu6GCv American Journal of Public Health,
online August 23, 2016.
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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