Oct 29, 2023 12:00:00

Climbing just 50 stairs a day can reduce your risk of heart disease by 20%.

Even though we know that exercise reduces the risk of various diseases, it can be difficult to incorporate exercise into our daily lives. However, a new study shows that climbing just 50 stairs a day can reduce your risk of heart disease by 20%.

Daily stair climbing, disease susceptibility, and risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease: A prospective cohort study - Atherosclerosis

https://www.atherosclerosis-journal.com/article/S0021-9150(23)05221-8/fulltext

Walking more than five flights of stairs a day can cut risk of heart disease by 20%, study says | Tulane News
https://news.tulane.edu/pr/walking-more-five-flights-stairs-day-can-cut-risk-heart-disease-20-study-says

Want to Cut Heart Disease Risk? Here's How Many Flights of Stairs to Climb Daily : ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/want-to-cut-heart-disease-risk-heres-how-many-flights-of-stairs-to-climb-daily

Climbing up and down stairs is an exercise that many people do on a daily basis, and even those who are busy and don't have time to exercise or those who can't afford to purchase exercise equipment can easily practice it. can do. Therefore, an international research team from China, the United States, and the United Kingdom investigated how climbing and descending stairs is associated with the risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD).

Atherosclerosis is a common form of arteriosclerosis that causes diseases such as coronary artery disease and ischemic stroke , which are the cause of death for many people. The research team defines this cardiovascular disease associated with atherosclerosis as ASCVD.

The study analyzed data on 458,860 adults from

the UK Biobank , a large biobank in the United Kingdom. assessed their susceptibility to cardiovascular disease. Additionally, lifestyle habits, including going up and down stairs, were continuously surveyed for a median of 12.5 years. During the follow-up period, a total of 39,043 people developed ASCVD, including 30,718 cases of coronary artery disease and 10,512 cases of ischemic stroke.

The analysis found that going up and down at least 50 flights of stairs (approximately 5 floors) each day was associated with a 20% lower risk of ASCVD. In particular, the lower the susceptibility to cardiovascular disease, the greater the risk reduction from climbing stairs.

It was also reported that those who stopped climbing the stairs during the follow-up period had a 32% higher risk of developing ASCVD than those who never started climbing the stairs.

'Brief, high-intensity stair climbing improves cardiorespiratory fitness and lipid profiles for people who are unable to achieve currently recommended levels of physical activity,' said study co-author Lu Qi, a professor at Tulane University School of Medicine. 'This study highlights the potential benefits of stair climbing as a primary prevention method for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease in the general population.'