Climbing Stairs May Be Good for Your Health

Stairmaster joke from Men in Black

I ran across this article (reference below) on the potential benefit of climbing stairs for cardiovascular health. The highlights and abstract are below:

“Highlights

This large cohort of UK adults demonstrated that climbing more than five flights of stairs daily was associated with over a 20% lower risk of ASCVD.

The associations were broadly concordant in populations with varying susceptibilities to ASCVD.

Participants who discontinued stair climbing between the baseline and resurvey exhibited a higher risk of ASCVD in comparison to those who never engaged in stair climbing.

Abstract

Background and aims

The associations between the intensity of stair climbing and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) and how these vary by underlying disease susceptibility are not fully understood. We aim to evaluate the intensity of stair climbing and risk of ASCVD types and whether these vary by the presence of ASCVD risk factors.

Methods

This prospective study used data on 458,860 adult participants from the UK Biobank. Information about stair climbing, sociodemographic, and lifestyle factors was collected at baseline and a resurvey 5 years after baseline. ASCVD was defined as coronary artery disease (CAD), ischemic stroke (IS), or acute complications. Associations between flights of stair climbing and ASCVD were examined as hazard ratios (HRs) from Cox proportional hazards models. The modification role of disease susceptibility on such associations was assessed by analyses stratified by levels of genetic risk score (GRS), 10-year risks of ASCVD, and self-reported family history of ASCVD.

Results

During a median of 12.5 years of follow-up, 39,043 ASCVD, 30,718 CAD, and 10,521 IS cases were recorded. Compared with the reference group (reported climbing stairs 0 times/day at baseline), the multivariable-adjusted HRs for ASCVD were 0.97 (95% CI, 0.93–1.01), 0.84 (0.82–0.87), 0.78 (0.75–0.81), 0.77 (0.73–0.80) and 0.81 (0.77–0.85) for stair climbing of 1–5, 6–10, 11–15, 16–20 and ≥21 times/day, respectively. Comparable results were obtained for CAD and IS. When stratified by different disease susceptibility based on the GRS for CAD/IS, 10-year risk, and family history of ASCVD, the protection association of stair climbing was attenuated by increasing levels of disease susceptibility. Furthermore, compared with people who reported no stair climbing (<5 times/d) at two examinations, those who climbed stairs at baseline and then stopped at resurvey experienced a 32% higher risk of ASCVD (HR 1.32, 95% CI:1.06–1.65).

Conclusions

Climbing more than five flights of stairs (approx 50 steps) daily was associated with a lower risk of ASCVD types independent of disease susceptibility. Participants who stopped stair climbing between the baseline and resurvey had a higher risk of ASCVD compared with those who never climbed stairs.”

This interests me because I climbed well over 20 flights of stairs pretty much every day when I was a consultation-liaison psychiatrist. Occasionally, I logged over 40 flights. The hospital had 8 floors and I was often repeatedly hiking up the stairs. I avoided using elevators because they slowed me down too much.

There was a threshold effect of stair climbing in the study, meaning the benefit was lost if you went over a certain number of “floors.” Going over 15 or 20 didn’t gain much for subjects. A flight was 10 stair steps.

I think the idea is that in those who live in homes with the right number of stair steps, you’ve got a no cost, low tech form of cardiovascular exercise. You might exert a little more stress on the carpet.

On the other hand, you could save wear and tear on the carpet (if you’re worried about it) by spending some money on stair stepping exercise equipment. You can buy a Stairmaster model for about $2.000-3,000. There are cheaper stair stepper models, which look a little flimsy and even unstable enough to raise the risk for falls, in my view.

But I would never go back to work just to climb the stairs again.

Reference:

Song Z, Wan L, Wang W, Li Y, Zhao Y, Zhuang Z, Dong X, Xiao W, Huang N, Xu M, Clarke R, Qi L, Huang T, Daily stair climbing, disease susceptibility, and risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease: A prospective cohort study, Atherosclerosis (2023)