- Climbing 50 stair steps daily may reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases such as stroke, blood clots, and heart attacks by as much as 20%, according to a new study.
- The study saw these benefits with five flights of stairs a day, comparing them to people who did not climb any stairs daily.
- Walking up steps may provide an enhanced form of aerobic exercise in which the body battles gravity to move upward, thus using more muscles and expending more energy.
Climbing stairs regularly may significantly reduce your risk of
The study finds that people who climbed 50 stairs over the course of a day reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease by 20% compared to people who did not climb any stairs daily.
While the study focused primarily on
The findings are published in the journal Atherosclerosis.
The authors of the study analyzed data from 458,860 adult participants in the UKBiobank. They collected information regarding the individuals’ stair-climbing, lifestyle, and sociodemographic factors as baseline data and then again five years later. They followed the participants for 12.5 years.
They then cross-referenced the participants’ stair-climbing habits with coronary artery disease, ischemic stroke, or acute complications, which they used as markers of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease for this study.
The researchers assumed an average staircase to be 10 steps. The researchers tracked the incidence of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease for people climbing their staircases 1–5, 6–10, 11–15, 16–20, and equal to or greater than 21 times a day.
Although the greatest protective effect of stair-climbing was associated with people who were not considered at particular…
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