Honestly, as a person who worked for years on standing jobs, fuck that. It wrecked my back and knees and I worked extremely hard to move to an office job. Now, decades later, my knees still creak and pop when I move, but I see people moving their desks to standing desks.
People, just go to a gym regularly and work out. There's no easy fix.
When I was a student I worked for 6 month as security guard on events.
Mostly the job was being standing at an entrance for 12 hours in a row (with a 20 Minutes break to eat), waiting for the 12 hours to be over (it was not the entrance for public so basically there were people crossing in the early morning and at the end of the day)
So I partially understand what you've been through. I'm lucky it was just a student job for me, but 25 years later it's still a bad memory.
Article agrees with risks of standing and clearly says there is no winner here. Suggestion:
The best way for desk jockeys to avoid the sitting trap, research shows, is to not just stand but walk around — for a couple of minutes once an hour, or for five or 10 minutes a few times a day.
I have a standing desk, and I try to switch between sitting and standing. But I also have a Fitbit Charge 2 that has (as the default setting) a reminder to walk at least 250 steps every hour. If I am below that at 10 minutes to the hour, there is a little buzz, and often I try to take a quick break then and walk around the office.
Everything is bad for you if you do it long enough, this has been known just about for ever. Sit, stand, take walks, run up and down the stairs, take a cup of coffee and chat with your coworkers/neighbours. Just make sure to not eat too much sugar and so on :-)
I alternate between standing and sitting. It seems only natural to me that the body needs variation. Stand, sit and (if possible) take a brief walk. Also, there's only one way to stand (correct me if I'm wrong), but there's a whole bunch of ways to sit. http://www.anvention.com/images/zazen_postures.jpg
You can still stand with bad posture which doesn't do your lower back any good. [0] Some people call it sway back, others call it Anterior Pelvic Tilt (APT).
Can't edit, but I now see what you meant for sitting in different positions. Still, people should be standing and thinking about how they stand in order to get better posture and not have back problems in the future.
Oh my god! What a coincidence this is. Yesterday at around 3am I woke up in the middle if the night and I had the worst pain in my lower back.
I have never had any problems with my back in my entire life so this came as a shocker. My job is as a web developer so I spend 90% of my time awake seated and working.
Here's what happened:
Once I woke up, I tried standing up and I could barely walk because of the pain. Talk about being god damn mortified. I immediately called my girlfriend to let her know she should probably check on me in the morning.
In a state of panic, I also called a doctor friend of mine at around 4:30am. I explained my situation to him and he told me to conduct a simple test and answer some questions so he could assess what it could be: he asked me to put my chin on my chest which I could and that was good. He also asked whether there was numbness or tingliness which I didn't have so he was more at ease. However, because he couldn't explain what it was he suggested I should go to the hospital. It wasn't safe to get out at that time so I decided to take some ibuprofen which luckily I had, and wait it out till the sun was up. I managed to get some sleep by 5:50am and by the time I woke up at 9am. The pain had somehow reduced and I could walk again.
My friend later on prescribed some myospaz and suggested it might have been a muscular issue. I'm feeling much better now. I still can't bend or lift heavy things but I can at least I can do some basic stuff like go to the bathroom without feeling excruciating pain when I change body posture e.g. moving from standing to sitting position and vice-versa.
I'm working from home now. Seated on my couch in the living room because, you know, code must be shipped and I absolutely love what I do. My back is rested on the couch so I'm pretty comfortable and the pain has been gradually decreasing.
LESSONS LEARNED
1. What didn't help:
Reading about back pains on the internet. If you want to absolutely heighten your anxiety when panicking about your health, read about it on the internet. I had begun to imagine the worst.
2. My girlfriend has been so great helping me out with cooking and cleaning since I've been pretty much useless at any laborious tasks. I should probably marry her NOW. She's been amazing.
3. Ergonomics
I've been trying to figure out what I might have done to trigger this and the only thing that comes to mind is that lately I had been changing my posture to a more upright position i.e. straight back instead of leaning back on the chair and letting my back ease up by resting it on the back of the chair. I'm insatiably trying to learn all I can about this topic. (any resources are welcome)
I sit on my chair cross legged. Sometimes in the floor or on my desk, depending on what I'm up to. I doubt it has any health benefits over "regular" sitting.
I've tried sitting cross legged on the chair. It still feels uncomfortable with a little balance issue. I was spending more time in correcting my posture than sitting in a relaxed manner.
It definitely has health benefits, by restricting blood flow to the lower part of the body. It is highly advisable to eat while sitting on the floor to aid digestion
I usually work following a 25 minutes of work followed by a short 3-5 minute break schedule, which usually consists in going up a floor, get some water, and back to the office (that's the closest water source we have). I cannot speak for any health benefits of my "technique", but I find it very refreshing.
Too much of any particular position will be bad. Sit on different chairs, move around regularly. Don't sit on the same chair in the same position all day for 40 years.
Last week it was standing : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15050248
It's starting to be difficult to know how to work !
(And yes, I know it's a matter of the duration you stay in the same position, but I found it funny that both topics pop out in the same week)