There are all kinds of advice for entrepreneurs who want to start their own business, everything from financial tips and strategies to advertising to what kind of retractable banner to put up over the front of your store. There is all kinds of help out there, but you’ll search in vain for any advice on maintaining your physical health.
You can read the best 6 tips for entrepreneurs or how to start a business right from the comfort of home without ever encountering any health tips. The other advice is good. You’ll need it to succeed in your business.
The simple fact of the matter is though if you don’t have your health you don’t have anything. It may seem trite or not relevant to your 20-something age bracket, but health problems don’t discriminate based on age or upward mobility. If you’re human you can get sick, experience debilitating injuries, or die; all without warning or mercy.
A little planning can stave off most of those problems, improve your health, increase your energy, and sharpen your mental focus.
Sitting vs. Standing
Entrepreneurs are going to spend a lot of time sitting; typing on your computer, answering the phone, planning your strategy, and taking care of the million-and-one things you need to handle every day to get your business off the ground.
Unfortunately, all the sitting that is so necessary to the success of your business is detrimental to your health and longevity. Sitting for long periods of time doesn’t burn many calories while increasing your risk of heart disease, diabetes, weight gain, aches and pains, and early death.
The simple act of standing at a Height Adjustable Desks Online, for several hours at a time, does more to reverse those problems than you would imagine. Let’s take a look at some studies on the subject.
A What?
A height-adjustable desk is a desk that can be raised or lowered for you to use while you’re sitting or standing. They can be raised by electrical motors, hand-cranked, or gravity adjusted. The last ones are counter-balanced so they’ll stay in wherever position you manually move them to.
They are available for every budget so there’s no reason to put off getting one and many reasons to get one as soon as possible. Let’s look at some of them.
Health Risks and Benefits
Weight
When you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight. When you burn more calories than you eat, you lose weight. Simple.
The act of standing, without doing any particular exercise, will burn 50-60 calories an hour more than sitting for that same amount of time. Studies of office workers showed that workers who received a height-adjustable desk and stood at it in the afternoon for just three hours, burned, on average, 170 more calories a day than their co-workers who continued sitting at their desks all day. That works out to 850 calories a week.
Back Pain
Back pain is the most common complaint from office workers, or entrepreneurs, who sit at their desk for long periods of time. Several studies were conducted to study the problem.
Test subjects who used a standing desk reported 32% less back pain within a few weeks of beginning the study. A separate study by the CDC (Center for Disease Control) found that subject experienced 54% less neck and upper back pain in just four weeks.
What was worse, removing the standing desks reversed all the improvements the subject experienced in just two weeks. They went backward faster than they went forward!
Heart Disease
The Smithsonian got in on the act too, with separate studies on standing desks.
Scientists have connected sitting and increased risk of cardiovascular problems since the 1950s when British researchers compared the heart disease rates for bus drives versus bus conductors. Drivers sit while conductors stand for the same length of time on the same bus. The drivers experienced more heart problems than the conductors.
Research since then has revealed a 125% increase in heart problems for people who sit for as little as two hours a day compared to those who stand instead. People who sit for five or more hours a day have twice the risk of heart problems as those who stand and exercise.
Protect Your Health to Protect Your Business
The first step to protecting your business is to protect your health. For the entrepreneur who wants their business to succeed, a standing desk is a good way to get started.