Health experts urge taking steps as a painless way to add activity to daily life.
One of the world’s best exercise devices is free, easy to use, and readily available—in fact, you probably have dozens in your home and workplace.
They’re stairs, and lifting your body against gravity to climb them is one of the best exercises you can do for your heart, muscles, and bones. In a “no time for exercise” age, the steps all around us provide an ever-present way to fit physical activity into daily life.
Yet most people avoid them. In a recent study, Given the choice between riding an escalator or climbing an adjacent flight of stairs, 95 percent of the people observed chose the path of least physical effort. This finding confirmed conclusions of a classic study by Yale University obesity expert Kelly Brownell.
“Most people don’t realize how little physical activity they actually get,” he says, “and how important it is to use every opportunity they have to be active.”
Lifestyle activity—such as choosing stairs over elevators—is increasingly being urged by public-health experts, who point to mounting evidence that small amounts of exercise accumulated throughout the day can provide significant health benefits. For example, the Harvard Alumni Health Study in USA examined the lifestyle habits of more than 11,000 men and found that those who climbed at least 20 floors per week had about a 20 percent lower risk of stroke and of death from all causes during the study period, according to I-Min Lee, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.
For those who want a more intense workout, continuous stair climbing can be an effective way to build lower body strength and cardiovascular endurance. One of the most popular exercise trends of the last decade, step aerobics, is based on going up and down a step for 30 to 60 minutes. And one of the most popular exercise machines during that same time period, the stair climber, relies on this same motion.
Athletes have been running up and down stadium steps as part of training for years.
This kind of intense stair climbing may be inadvisable for people with knee problems, such as arthritis, as well as those with heart or lung disorders, notes Perry Esterson, a physical therapist and athletic trainer with Physiotherapy Associates in northern Virginia. But taking the stairs in daily life is a great way for most people to boost their fitness and strengthen the muscles that support the knee.
“The thickest cartilage in the body is behind the patella (kneecap), so it’s designed to withstand a lot of stress,” he says. “And the more you go up and down the stairs, the stronger you’ll become and the easier that activity will be.”
So, next time you have a choice, climb up those stairs.
