Sitting is the new smoking" - so wrote the relevant media a few years ago.

The background had been various studies from the past 20 years that had shown how harmful sitting is to health.

If you sit a lot, you have to fear the effects on your muscles;

it can shorten, leading to back and neck pain.

People who sit a lot also have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes, and they may die prematurely.

The increased risk can only be compensated for with a lot of exercise - for example 60 to 75 minutes of cycling on the flat or brisk walking a day.

People sit too long every day, and the problem has become increasingly serious in recent years, researchers from the University of Madrid showed two years ago.

The proportion of people who sit for more than four and a half hours a day without getting up - this is considered the critical threshold for an increased cardiovascular risk - increased in almost all countries from 2002 to 2017.

In 2017, 57.2 percent of men and 50.2 percent of women in Germany were such permanent sitters.

"I'm afraid people are now even more sitting in the home office," says Thomas Lüscher, Professor of Cardiology at Imperial College in London.

Taking a break from sitting can pay off: Studies show that people who sit less have better metabolic values ​​than those who sit

"We used to think that sitting all the time was only bad for your back," says Pavel Dietz, a sports scientist at the Institute for Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine at the University Hospital in Mainz.

"When the studies on the further disadvantages of constant sitting came out, more and more occupational medicine training and further education pointed out that it is not only important for the back to take a break from sitting, but also to avoid chronic diseases. Apparently with success: according to a Forsa survey commissioned by Techniker Krankenkasse in 2016, one in four of the 1210 respondents stated that standing meetings were held in their company.

Some swear by the big round sitting balls, others wobble on swopper stools in front of their desks or swing on knee stools - all that

to sit “dynamically” and not as if stuck in place.

Some buy or build sit-stand desks.

You put a table on top of a table, one is used for working while sitting and one for working while standing.

Such solutions have gained unexpected popularity, especially in the Corona home office;

some of the self-designed constructions were proudly shown on social media.

Blood pressure drops – so does work speed

A relatively new trend is desk bikes or desk treadmills.

The wheels – also called desk bikes – look like bicycle ergometers without handlebars.

There are versions with and without an integrated worktop, the latter simply slides under a normal workspace.

The treadmills also lack the usual front end with handles and display, they are also available "bare" or in combination with a desk.

You walk at a speed of between 1.6 and 2.5 kilometers per hour, sometimes up to 3.2 km/h – this corresponds to slow walking.

The active workplaces are not cheap: A good sit-stand desk is available from a hundred euros, you have to invest a few hundred euros for desk bicycles and more than 1000 euros for a stable treadmill.