Do people with standing desks ever use anti-fatigue mats? I have one in my kitchen and it makes a world of difference in terms of easing pain on feet from standing for a long time.

-mouser (April 29, 2011, 09:47 AM)

I heard most people use some kind of mat, though there seems to be no agreement about what is the best solution. Almost everyone I heard of uses some kind of stool to shift the weight from one foot to the other.

There was another article recently (can't locate it) about how sitting all day is worse for you that they previously thought -- and more articles recently about standing desks.

-mouser (April 19, 2011, 09:48 PM)

Some of those articles, for reference. I'm in the process of trying a standing table, btw. Pictures and impressions soon.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_19/b4177071221162.htm

Hamilton, like many sitting researchers, doesn't own an office chair.
"If you're standing around and puttering, you recruit specialized
muscles designed for postural support that never tire," he says.
"They're unique in that the nervous system recruits them for
low-intensity activity and they're very rich in enzymes." One enzyme,
lipoprotein lipase, grabs fat and cholesterol from the blood, burning
the fat into energy while shifting the cholesterol from LDL (the bad
kind) to HDL (the healthy kind). When you sit, the muscles are
relaxed, and enzyme activity drops by 90% to 95%, leaving fat to camp
out in the bloodstream. Within a couple hours of sitting, healthy
cholesterol plummets by 20%.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/stand-up-while-you-read-this/

But it looks as though there’s a more sinister aspect to sitting, too.
Several strands of evidence suggest that there’s a “physiology of
inactivity”: that when you spend long periods sitting, your body
actually does things that are bad for you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage

Sitting, it would seem, is an independent pathology. Being sedentary
for nine hours a day at the office is bad for your health whether you
go home and watch television afterward or hit the gym. It is bad
whether you are morbidly obese or marathon-runner thin. “Excessive
sitting,” Dr. Levine says, “is a lethal activity.”

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=can-sitting-too-much-kill-you-2011-01-06

Western society is built around sitting. We sit at work, we sit at
school, we sit at home, and we sit in our cars as we commute back and
forth. In fact, a recent survey reports that the average American
accumulates more than 8 hours of sedentary behavior every day—roughly
half of their waking hours.

http://fittipdaily.com/sitting-could-still-be-killing-you-regardless-of-exercise-5805/

New research suggests that your daily bout at the gym may not be the
only thing you need to stay alive if you spend your life behind a
desk.