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There's little evidence that workplace interventions like the standing desks or treadmill desks will prevent the harm caused by sitting too much.

This was based on an analysis of 20 of the best studies on  increases heart failure risk and disability risk due to too much sitting.

In the studies, which was published in Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews on Thursday, the co-authors came to conflicting conclusions about whether standing desks reduce sitting time, according to NPR.

The scientist said that there is very low to low quality evidence that sit-stand desks may decrease workplace sitting between thirty minutes to two hours per day without having adverse effects at the short or medium term, Fortune reported. 

Dr. Jos Verbeek, a health researcher at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and one of the co-authors, said that in the best research available wasn't great and that the studies were either too small to be significant or were poorly designed. For example, most were not randomized controlled trials, and the longest study followed participants for only six months.

He noted that there isn't really any evidence that standing is better than sitting and that the extra calories you burn from standing over sitting "are barely enough to cover a couple of banana chips." Furthermore, he said that there's evidence that standing can be bad for your health." A 2005 study in Denmark showed prolonged standing at work led to a higher hospitalization risk for enlarged veins.

In the other hand, while Lucas Carr, a behavioral medicine professor at the University of Iowa who was not involved in the meta-analysis, agrees that the health benefits of standing are not well-known, yet he pointed out that standing in moderation allows you to burn more calories than sitting. He added that "those calories every day over many years will add up."

Verbeek also said that the presence of the standing desk or the pedaling desk in the office doesn't assure that the people will get out of the chair and use it. He suggests that redesigning work environments, such as placing a printer further away from the desks and restricting the use of elevators.