Going up?
If you regularly take the elevator instead of the stairs, your weight – and blood pressure and lipid levels– may be going up, too.
Sure, elevators and escalators may seem more convenient and time-efficient, especially when you’re cradling your laptop or a load of groceries in your hands. But health experts have long advised folks to make simple changes to sneak more exercise into their daily routine. And scientific research is beginning to suggest that there’s benefit in taking the stairs.
In fact, one British scientist who has studied the public’s use of stairs – or lack thereof—said the benefits might be far greater than you think.
“If we can persuade more people to take the stairs, then we might really have something in the war against obesity,” researcher Frank Eves told the Associated Press.
Indeed, in one recent Swiss study, people were told to use the stairs exclusively, climbing up an average 23 flights of stairs a day instead of their usual five. By the end of just 12 weeks, the participants weighed less, had slimmer waistlines, less body fat, lower blood pressure and overall better fitness.
Similarly, researchers from the University of Missouri and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark instructed participants in a separate study to stop taking the stairs and use elevators and escalators whenever possible. They also told study participants to drive rather than walk, and to reduce the number of steps they took per day from the recommended 10,000 to 1,400. After just two weeks of this inactive lifestyle, participants saw a rise in their abdominal fat and blood lipids, and a decrease in their muscle mass.
“Our findings indicated that if there is a lack of normal physical activity, a person greatly increases the chances of developing a chronic disease,” Missouri researcher Frank Booth stated in a news release.
Despite the proven benefits, getting people to take the stairs remains an uphill battle, so to speak. Not only can it be difficult to find stairs – hotels seem to hide them, some businesses tend to lock them – but when given the choice, most people prefer to ride elevators or escalators, and the stairwells remain virtually empty.
In fact, of nearly 18,000 shoppers secretly watched as part of a landmark study at a suburban Baltimore mall, fewer than 5 percent chose to take the stairs. After putting signs near the escalators that read “Your heart needs exercise, use the stairs” and “Improve your waistline, use the stairs,” stair usage rose by about 50 percent. Three months after the signs were removed, however, people were back to their escalator ways.
Whether you choose regular stairs, a gym stairclimber, or running the bleachers, the benefits of stair climbing are substantial enough that some employers have launched public health campaigns to get their workers out of elevators. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kaiser Permanente, and the county of Arlington, VA are among those with varied “Take the stairs” programs. In Arlington, the public is reminded “it’s a free workout,” with one minute of stair climbing burning an estimated 10 calories.
If you have good knees, a sound back and access to flights of stairs, this may be a health regimen that could work for you, assuming you have no medical reasons preventing it. Fitting fitness into your daily life can improve more than a dozen of the health conditions Navigenics tests for in our genetic health service.
Still need a little more cajoling? You can easily track how many calories or pounds of fat you burn going up and down stairs.
And as an added benefit, by taking the stairs, you’ll avoid all those awkward conversations—and painful elevator Muzak.
Stellathomas Dec 29, 2008
I have always wondered how much energy an elevator uses vs. a human uses. I live in an apartment building with a typical small Otis elevator, and am amazed to see my neighbours use it instead of walking one or two flights. Think your physicist could figure out some realistic numbers for elevators (including efficiency losses) versus human energy use?
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Stellathomas