Active office chairs

More movement at the office with active office chairs

"Sitting is as bad as smoking!”. With this report scientists around the world caused quite a sensation. To make sure that sitting is not as harmful as inhaling 4000 toxic ingredients while smoking a cigarette, you should get as much movement as possible - at best directly at the office. Active office chairs offer the ideal support for this.

Sitting over extended periods makes you ill 

The everyday life of the people in the western world has caused increasing numbers of individuals to spend too much time sitting. Much too long, as was impressively shown by an Australian study (Sitting Time and All-Cause Mortality Risk in 222 497 Australian Adults): According to this people whose profession involves sitting spend nearly 22 hours per day on chairs, sofas, seats or in bed. The movement deficiency due to this weakens the muscles. Sooner or later they are then no longer able to hold us upright.

This has dramatic consequences: Stomach muscles that are too weak lead to a hunchback that not only causes one-sided strain of the intervertebral discs, but also compression of the internal organs. In addition, studies provide evidence that sitting for too long also partially significantly increases the risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis and thromboses, as well as for some types of cancer. Even the brain is negatively affected and starts to deteriorate earlier.

Extended sitting concepts bring movement to the office

Active office chairs bring more movement to the workplace. This is made possible through active sitting concepts, which all allow a cushioned multi-dimensional movement of the sitting surface. Active office chairs promote the movement and ensure a greater number of position changes than standard office chairs with synchronous mechanical action. Therefore they are amongst others especially recommendable for people, who through their activities are nearly exclusively tied to a chair and therefore depend on additional movement impulses.
With the sitting concepts tested at present there are currently five different approaches.

Micro-training for the muscles

Sitting with movement has many decisive advantages. For example the intervertebral discs are no longer unevenly strained, but more evenly over their entire surface. This type of loading is not a problem for all important buffering organs. Apart from this, when sitting on active office chairs the body must continuously perform smallest movements to maintain the balance. This micro training strengthens the so-called autochthonous muscles. These are small, deep-seated muscles that are located along the spinal column. They hold us up right and stabilise the spinal column.
As required a flexible backrest not only gives additional security but also increases the selection of different sitting positions, which should be continuously changed. The backrest already offers more comfort, for example when one would simply like to lean back during a telephone call.

Counter chairs in the counter area

If you work at an elevated workplace in the counter area, permanently standing is very stressful. Therefore for this area special counter chairs have been developed. They basically fulfil the same criteria as active office chairs, but have a significantly higher sitting position and a foot ring for comfortable support of the feet. If the workplace cannot be left for a longer period of time, the use of a separate footrest is recommended. This allows you to vary the sitting position additionally. Tip: Even a perfectly adjusted office chair does not protect against back pain. Hence include movement breaks as wells as many posture changes as possible in your everyday office life.