Man determines what would happen to a human body if one doesn't sit for five straight days

Content warning: Recreating the following experiment at home might impact readers' health.

Pushing our bodies to extremes can sometimes shed light on why the human physique is designed the way it is. That's what popular fitness influencer Lucas, known as @FocusedLucas on YouTube, discovered when he took on a challenge at his followers' request. They urged him to avoid sitting for an entire week, and Lucas decided to give it a try. His five-day journey of nonstop standing revealed both surprising benefits and painful side effects. The April 2023 video documenting the experiment has garnered over two million views, as viewers were intrigued by how Lucas managed household chores and work while standing.

On the first day of the experiment, Lucas had to figure out how to work on his computer standing. He spoke about how prolonged sitting causes conditions like obesity, back pain, spinal dysfunction, joint degeneration, poor posture in the upper back neck and shoulders, vascular problems in the legs and so on. So he tested out what prolonged standing would do to him. He made a makeshift table to increase the height of his work setup and felt that it was comfortable. Lucas not only edited his videos for hours while standing but also did everything from cooking, dishwashing and laundry to working out, having his meal and even using the toilet without sitting. 

Breaking from his usual routine, Lucas decided to jog to the grocery store instead of driving. Speaking about how it felt to stand for hours, the fitness enthusiast mentioned that his feet started aching by evening and he couldn't wait to go to bed. This continued for four more days and on Day 5, he started feeling the fatigue and pain of constantly standing. He couldn't help but take a car ride to the grocery store at one point but he made sure that he was squatting rather than sitting. Finally, on Day 6, Lucas updated his viewers about his "no sitting" journey. For him, it was a "game changer" though he had some dull aching pains in his joints.

After five days of standing, Lucas noticed a significant change in his posture, particularly a slouch in his upper back. "So on the negative side, it looks like I'm starting to really form this slouched-over position, especially in the upper back here. But on the positive side, it looks like I'm getting back a little bit more curve in my lower spine which should have been there," he explained. He decided to end the challenge on Day 6 because of the aches in his joints. Lucas noticed how his productivity increased by 30% when he worked in a standing position and he felt that his digestion improved too as "things got moving faster and smoother." When he eventually sat on his couch "it didn't even feel that good," he said, yet it was all he wanted to do. 

While Lucas’s experiment highlighted the benefits of standing more, it also underscored the need for balance between sitting and standing. "I think it's really telling that a young, healthy and relatively fit man had enough issues standing all day that he ended early. Imagine the poor 40-year-old cashier," said @runex4438. "The dangers of standing for too long are actually well documented. There's a reason we default to sitting. Sitting too much is certainly not good. But neither is standing for too long," commented @TheBlackWaltz. "Thank you for talking about things moving in the right direction, that is valuable," added @keptleroymg6877.