The Treadmill Desk!

via zdnet.

A while ago, I read a story (Unguided Days) written by my friend, writer Rohit Gupta (aka DJ Fadereu), where the world has evolved (or devolved?) to a point where the employer provides everything possibly needed right at an employees desk to get maximum hours from him. The day's lunch selection is delivered right to the desk through a food pipeline, and a highly evolved e-psychiatrist poses as a personalized e-god for each human. Matrix? Brave New World?

Well, while a personalized e-god might seem a bit too in the future, a new technology already has been launched in the market that allows employees to lose weight while working.

"They built what they called a "vertical workstation"--a desk fitted over a standard treadmill. They had 15 obese people to work at this treadmill-desk and measured how many calories they burned.



If an overweight office worker used this vertical workstation all day, every day for a year, he or she could lose up to 66 pounds, the researchers report in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.



James Levine and Jennifer Miller measured how many calories their 15 volunteers burned using exhaled breath but did not determine if the volunteers actually lost weight.



On average, their overweight volunteers burned 100 calories more every hour while walking slowly--at 1 mile per hour--than while sitting in a chair.



"If obese individuals were to replace time spent sitting at the computer with walking computer time by two to three hours a day, and if other components of energy balance were constant, a weight loss of (44 pounds to 66 pounds) a year could occur," the researchers wrote.



The researchers said their desk costs about $1,600."

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