5 Reasons To Take The Stairs
anjala farahath .
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Sylvester Stallone became the symbol of stair climbing exercises when he played Rocky, scaling the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum, but that’s him. How many flights of stairs do you climb in a day? Do you climb up to your office or do you use the snobby elevator? We can understand if your office is on the 10th floor, but if you hop onto the elevator to reach the 1st floor, then you’re missing out on some important health benefits of this moderate physical activity.
Regular climbing of stairs can benefit your health tremendously. It’s a great way to keep yourself active and include some form of exercise in your busy life. From countering menopause to lowering your blood pressure, climbing stairs can help you in more than one way (1), (2). If you think you need some motivation to ditch the elevator and switch to the stairs, here’s a list of reasons why you should take the stairs-
1. Climbing Stairs Is The Easiest Calorie Burning Activity
It doesn’t take years of posture correction, sweating it out at the gym, or some deep knowledge to climb the stairs. We all know how to climb the stairs. It’s as easy as ABC. It’s an easily accessible form of workout that we don’t utilize, thanks to our laziness and our hectic lives. But, here’s the good news, climbing stairs will help you burn more calories than jogging or walking. Even if you’re an underdog in the world of fitness, ascending or descending the stairs will help you burn calories at a faster rate. You can burn up to 1 calorie for every 10 steps you climb, and 1 calorie for every 20 steps you descend. Compared to a maximum of 100 calories burned with a 10-minute jog, this is a decent number. Another advantage is that, if you weigh more, you burn calories by climbing stairs.
2. It Enhances Your Cardiovascular Health
When you climb stairs, be it just a couple of floors or a just a handful of steps, it raises your heart rate. Now, you might get tired, and start huffing and puffing, but all of that panting is worth it. Because climbing stairs has a positive effect on your cardiovascular health. It prevents your arteries from clogging, and it lowers your blood pressure (3). It also diminishes the risk of coronary heart disease, diabetes, vascular dementia, etc. A Harvard study has revealed that climbing stairs reduces the risk of heart strokes. The study involved more than 11,000 men who climbed around 3-5 flights of stairs a day and it found that they had a 20 percent reduction in the risk of a stroke in the long term (4).
3. It Builds Muscle Energy And Bone Density
We all agree that climbing stairs, although easy, is quite a taxing form of physical activity. The legs do most of the work. When you drag your foot upwards to climb the stairs, you are actually defying gravity and making an extra effort. So, your body experiences a positive change with increased bone density, increased muscle strength, and appreciably reduced risk of osteoporosis (5). Your leg muscles – the quadriceps, the glutes, hamstrings, calf muscles, as well as the hip flexors – are at work when you climb the stairs. All of this eventually translates into a strong musculoskeletal system.
4. Climbing Stairs Makes You Happy
Well, this could come as a surprise, but did you know that climbing stairs can actually make you happy? This activity helps our body to produce endorphins, the hormones that create a sense of happiness in the person’s state of mind (6). We all are on an endless quest for eternal happiness, aren’t we? Then, why not take this opportunity to climb the stairs and benefit from the double whammy of producing happy hormones, and losing weight. Furthermore, stair climbing doesn’t require any special equipment and almost every building has a set of stairs at your disposal. So, if you ever feel low, climbing the stairs may be the easiest way to brighten up your day. In the end, you won’t just be smiling from ear to ear, but you will also be getting fit and fab.
5. It’s The Best Anti-Aging Workout
Nobody wants to grow old and look like a goblin, and that’s probably one of the reasons why capitalism thrives on selling products that promise to help us achieve anti-aging properties. So, here’s an affordable hack for reaping anti-aging benefits. Climb stairs! Yes, climbing stairs can strengthen your core, improve your posture, and help slow down your aging process because you keep your body fit by engaging it in this vigorous form of exercise. Now, if no other reason was convincing enough for you to take the stairs, at least this should be.
Stair climbing is a humble form of exercise that we all can include in our daily lives. It doesn’t cost us anything, but it offers a lot of health benefits. So, now do you see yourself taking the stairs whenever you have the opportunity to? Let us know in the comments below.
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