UrbanUpdate

It's been less than a week since we shared with you the grim news that sitting as much as you do will one day transform you into a helpless, miserable, immobile old person who can barely walk. Now, a team of Canadian researchers have found that people who primarily stand at work are twice as likely to develop heart disease as their chair-dwelling counterparts. From the team's summary of its to-be-published report:

This was the case even after taking into account a wide range offactors, including personal factors (including age, gender, educationlevels, ethnicity, immigrant status and marital status), health (e.g.,diabetes, arthritis, hypertension, mood and anxiety disorders) and thetype of work being performed (e.g., physical demands, shift schedule).

It gets worse. Way worse.

In fact, the incidence of heart disease among those respondents whostood a lot at work (6.6 per cent) was is similar to the incidence ofheart disease among workers who smoked on a daily basis (5.8 per cent)or those who were obese (6.9 per cent).

Great, so people who sit on the job turn into bedridden geriatrics, while those who stand in the office might as well be eating nothing but double cheeseburgers, or going through a pack a day, or maybe both. Who cares? Life is apparently a dark, meaningless, and ultimately futile search for health and happiness that ends only in utter disappointment.

The researchers are careful to reassure those of you who have embraced the standing desk as an antidote to sitting-related maladies that you have not inadvertently placed yourselves in imminent danger, since the focus of their study was on prolonged standing that included few precious opportunities to take a seat. They go on to note that members of professions they found to be associated with the highest levels of standing time—sales and service workers, cooks, bank tellers, and the like—don't necessarily need to stand to perform their job duties, but are usually asked to do so anyway in order to appear "attentive, interested, and polite" to customers. These are important characteristics of good employees, to be sure, but are they worth turning everyone involved into spiritual smokers? Friend, I would submit to you that they are not.

...luckily for workplaces, in the case of prolonged standing, thereare interventions that are known to be effective and readilyavailable: they're called chairs.

So then, the quest for optimal workplace health grows ever more complex: If you have a job in which you're constantly on your feet, try carving out a few moments during the day in which you can take a load off. On the other hand, if you're an office-sitter equipped with only a chair, keep finding reasons to stand up and walk around more often. Just... not too often. And if the dueling dangers of sitting and standing have officially rendered you paralyzed with fear, you could always eschew a desk altogether and opt from this day forward to do all your work while reclining comfortably on the floor. This is your health we're talking about, after all. Can't be too careful.

Watch Now:Pull Off a Power SuitJay Willis is a staff writer at GQ covering news, law, and politics. Previously, he was an associate at law firms in Washington, D.C. and Seattle, where his practice focused on consumer financial services and environmental cleanup litigation. He studied social welfare at Berkeley and graduated from Harvard Law School... Read moreRelated Stories for GQCareer