All Apple employees now have standing desks. Here’s why

Apple CEO Tim Cook has long proclaimed that he believes sitting is the "new cancer” and that is why he equipped every employee with a standing desk at the company’s spaceship headquarters in California.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Cook said the health benefits of standing desks are overwhelming and he wanted to make sure all his employees had one.

“We have given all of our employees 100% standing desks,” Cook said. “If you can stand for a while, then sit, and so on and so forth, it’s much better for your lifestyle.”

Without disclosing the exact model of the desks used in the company’s year-old futuristic campus in Cupertino, Cook said the desks he bought are able to switch between standing and sitting with a touch of a button. He also added that no employee will be forced to use it.

Reminding people to stand and move throughout the day has been a passion of Cook’s and the company’s for quite some time. It’s one of the reasons they designed their Apple watches to instruct users and employees to stand or walk every hour over three years ago.

“We have a lot of people using the Apple Watch at Apple, and 10 minutes before the hour, suddenly they all get up and move. It took a little time? to get used to, but it’s great,” Cook said in 2015. “If I sit for too long, it will actually tap me on the wrist to remind me to get up and move, because a lot of doctors think sitting is the new cancer.”

Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital told FOX Business that an average American sits about 9 to 10 hours a day and the problem with sitting that long is that toxins start to accumulate throughout your body.

“[What happens then is the toxins] don’t get processed by the body,” he said.

In 2016, a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that excessive sitting was linked to an 18% increased risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.

Glatter said he recommends that people with desk jobs practice good posture and get up at least five to six times every hour.