It’s no secret that taking the stairs can help get your blood pumping. But according to new research, serial stair-climbing could actually help you live longer.
Roughly one in four Americans are physically inactive, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which often stems from a life of driving to work, sitting at a desk and taking the elevator. Numerous studies have shown that this kind of sedentary lifestyle can increase our risk of death from all causes, as well as heart disease, diabetes, obesity, colon cancer, and depression. However, for many of us, this inactivity isn’t a conscious choice.
Trying to fit in a run or a gym class can be tricky when work and family duties eat up all of your time. But there are things you can do to slip snippets of physical activity into your day-to-day life. And taking the stairs is one of them.
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“If you have the choice of taking the stairs or the lift, go for the stairs as it will help your heart,” Sophie Paddock, a cardiologist at the University of East Anglia and Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital Foundation Trust in the U.K., said in a statement. “Even brief bursts of physical activity have beneficial health impacts, and short bouts of stair climbing should be an achievable target to integrate into daily routines.”
In a recent meta-analysis, Paddock and her team collected data from nine different studies on the health benefits of climbing stairs, with a total of 480,479 participants. The participants were aged between 35 and 84 years old and included both healthy individuals and those with a previous history of heart disease.
Regularly climbing the stairs was associated with a 24 percent reduced risk of all-cause mortality and a 39 percent lower likelihood of dying from cardiovascular disease. It was also associated with a reduced risk of developing cardiovascular disease full stop, including lower risk of heart attack, heart failure and stroke.
Of course, taking the stairs is not an option for everybody, but for those of us who are able-bodied, stair climbing is a great way to improve our overall and cardiovascular health.
“Based on these results, we would encourage people to incorporate stair climbing into their day-to-day lives,” Paddock said. “Our study suggested that the more stairs climbed, the greater the benefits—but this needs to be confirmed. So, whether at work, home, or elsewhere, take the stairs.”
The research will be presented today at European Society of Cardiology congress, Preventive Cardiology 2024.
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Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.