William Atkins
Wednesday, 03 September 2008 18:53
Science -
Health
Page 1 of 2
A small Swiss study has preliminarily found that using the stairs, rather than elevators (lifts) and escalators, reduces the risk of dying prematurely from any medical condition by 15%.
The study was conducted over concerns of the low percentage of Europeans and Americans performing any type of aerobic exercise on a regular basis.
The results of the study were presented at a recent meeting of the European Society of Cardiology (
ESC). An August 30, 2008 ESC
article
summarizing the study is entitled “The Geneva stair study: Stair
instead of elevator use at work - Cardiovascular preventive effects on
healthy employees.”
Lead researcher in the study, Dr. Philippe Meyer, from the University Hospital of Geneva, Switzerland, stated,
“The challenge remains to develop successful population-based interventions, which promote physical activities that can be easily integrated into everyday life.” [ESC article]
He commented that since most adults spend about half of their non-sleeping day at work, a good way to introduce exercise into a person’s lifestyle is at work, specifically walking up and down stairs.
Thus, the Meyer team of researchers from the
University of Geneva studied 69 hospital workers (77 started the study but 8 failed to finish) at their university for a period of twelve weeks. Each participant was considered a low-exercise person, meaning that they exercised less than two hours each week and climbed less than ten flights of stairs each day.
Over the study period, the subjects did not use the elevator or escalator but instead exclusively used the stairs to get from one floor of the hospital to another. They increased their usage of stair-climbing, on average, from five flights of stairs to 23 each day.
The conclusions of the study--very important to the health of all people--are found on page two.
