Instead of sitting at a desk all day, stroll on a treadmill at a ‘vertical work station’
Tom Spears
Sun
James Levine, the Mayo Clinic designer of the vertical workstation, tries his creation, which consists of a desk fitted over a standard treadmill. Photograph by : Reuters
Tired of watching obese people sit at computers all day, a Mayo Clinic doctor came up with a radical plan: Stick that office computer on a treadmill.
It works, says James Levine: Obese people can lose up to 30 kilograms a year by replacing their traditional desk with a “vertical work station,” strolling gently on the treadmill as they type, read e-mail or answer the phones.
His small study — based on just 15 obese people with desk jobs and little exercise in their lives — says healthy but obese people can start burning off weight efficiently without doing strenuous exercise.
And none of the volunteers fell off and hurt themselves.
When they sat at a normal desk, the group of 14 women and one man burned about 72 calories an hour. But alternately walking and standing on the treadmill, averaging 1.7 kilometres an hour, they burned off 191 calories an hour. (The volunteers picked their own walking speeds, and no one urged them to hurry. They didn’t have to walk all the time.)
Levine didn’t measure actual weight loss. This is a theoretical study, but he calculates that burning an extra 100 or more calories an hour for two or three hours each working day would cause many obese people to lose between 20 and 30 kilograms a year.
The “walk and work” device is no ordinary treadmill.
It’s built on a steel frame with four wheels, so that workers can steer it around the office.
There’s room for a computer, books, pens, a phone, a flower vase, coffee cup and paper tray. The whole thing slides over a standard treadmill, or slides away when the user wants to stand on a solid floor.
It can also slide over a chair so that the user doesn’t have to stand for the entire day. Levine says it costs about $1,600 US, not including the treadmill — a bargain, he suggests, since obesity costs the U.S. $100 billion to $200 billion a year in health costs and lost productivity.
But really — treadmills at work?
“Great idea!” said Peter Lemon, a kinesiology professor at the University of Western Ontario who specializes in exercise.
“What this is going to do is increase substantially the daily energy expenditure. It’s kind of like going out and taking a couple of hours to walk every day,” he said.
“I’ve kidded in the past that we should attach our computer to a bicycle ergometer (a form of exercise bike) so that if the kids want to play video games, they have to generate the power to run the computer. Our kids would all be fit and lean.”
A treadmill at work won’t boost anyone’s cardiovascular health if they’re just going for a slow stroll, he cautioned.
But it will help them lose weight. “Every time you move, you expend energy.” And even if the exercise has a low intensity, “it’s the total number of calories you expend that’s important. If this can add that much per hour over several hours, that’s important.”
The medical journal reports all 15 volunteers wanted to keep using their “vertical work stations” after the study finished.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007