Top 10 Health Benefits of Climbing Stairs

Medical Reviewed by ASHWATHY V. PILLAI, Postgraduate Degree in Dietetics & Applied Nutrition

Are your mornings made of quick breakfasts and skipping workout schedules?

If yes, we’ve got good news. While healthy breakfasts depend more on a diet plan, there are benefits of climbing stairs that can be your perfect way to indulge in daily exercises.

You would be surprised to see how simply ditching the elevators and climbing stairs can actually help you with fitness as well as weight loss. So fight the demon and climb the stairs!

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Climbing stairs can take care of your physical as well as mental health. From aiding in cardio to improving joint pains, there are numerous health benefits of climbing stairs.

Comparative Study Between Climbing Stairs and Walking | Who Should Avoid Climbing Stairs As A Form Of Exercise?

1. Climbing stairs helps you burn more calories every minute as compared to jogging.
2. Climbing stairs helps our body produce endorphins – the hormones known for creating a sense of happiness in our mind.[1]
3. Ultimately, whatever we do in life aims at a quest for happiness and if climbing stairs can give us the double whammy of losing weight and producing “happy hormones”, why not go for it each time there is an opportunity?
4. Weight loss is another benefit of climbing stairs.
5. Climbing stairs is a great form of cardio exercise. While climbing stairs, you work against gravity lifting your entire body. This activity strengthens your leg muscles making it a rather strenuous exercise.
6. Climbing stairs helps you improve your heart rate and health. The consistent movement of your legs and hips results in deeper breathing increasing your heartbeat, which leads to increased blood flow in all of your body.
7. Another benefit of climbing stairs is that it leads to stronger joints and muscles.
8. As per various researches,[3] it is proven and recommended by doctors, climbing stairs is an ideal way to improve your energy, develop your immune system, and lower your risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoporosis and heart disease.
9. Climbing stairs are definitely the most convenient form of exercise which reaps great results. There is no equipment cost as well as space issues.
10. We don’t even have to learn this exercise from any other source as we have all learned it during our childhood. And the best part is that it burns twice as many calories as walking does.

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Comparative Study Between Climbing Stairs and Walking

Walking and climbing stairs are two of the most common forms of exercises each with their own benefits for health and weight loss. While walking carries its own set of advantages, climbing stairs gives you an edge over it.

According to a scientific article published in Run society, Indonesia, climbing stairs requires you to work against gravity, it leads you to use more energy and thus burn more calories.

Given the nature of the exercise, you end up burning two to three times more energy than brisk walking. [5]

The Harvard Alumni Study, one of the biggest scientific studies to date, found that men who climbed an average of eight or more flights of stairs a day had a 33% lower mortality rate than their sedentary counterparts. [6]

The researchers from Mc Master University suggest recruited 31 sedentary but healthy people and made them complete two separate stair-climbing protocols:

The first involved three, 20-second spurts of climbing and the second protocol required the participants to climb up and down one flight of stairs for 60 seconds. Both these protocols took ten minutes each including warm-up, cool-down and recovery periods.

The participants were made to repeat these two workout protocols thrice a week. In the end, it was discovered that the exercise led to an improved state of the participants’ cardio-respiratory health, which means the ability of your circulatory, respiratory, and muscular systems to supply enough oxygen to your body during exercise.

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Who Should Avoid Climbing Stairs as a Form of Exercise?

Though climbing stairs offers a wide range of benefits as discussed above in the article, it may prove to be unsuitable for people with acute heart ailments and also for those suffering from knee, ankle or hip problems.

Even people with shaky limbs should avoid taking the stairs as there is always a threat of a fall. Any of you with these problems and symptoms considering to take up climbing stairs as an exercise must consult with your doctor before starting this.

So ditch the elevators and take the stairs – with consistent efforts come great results and weight loss by climbing stairs is one such endeavor.

Initially, you would feel your breath going totally out of control but with time, as you master the art of channelizing your energies towards climbing stairs, your breathing pattern will start playing a better sport, making the activity easier for you.

Have more to say on the benefits of climbing stairs? Send us your comments below so that our reader gain the maximum out of our posts. You can even post your queries in the comment section.

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