Climbing Stairs Or Walking To The Bus Stop Can Work Wonders For Your Health

Exercise is like a 'longevity jab' and it can help you gain as much as 11 years to your lives. This is what researcher and professor of public health at Griffith University's school of medicine and dentistry in Australia, Lennert Veerman claims.

Professor Veerman's study is published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which says that even the less active middle-aged could add 6 hours of life expectancy for each one-hour daily walk.

The study used data from fitness trackers of over 35,000 people, which was able to tell how exercise affected longevity. It calculated markers like lowered blood sugar, stress, blood pressure, and bad cholesterol. The effects on these markers were twice as strong as I had previously thought.

The highly active, amassing over 160 minutes of daily movement, were at a 73% lower risk of premature death than those who only managed an average of 49 minutes of activity each day. In Professor Veerman's words and activity maxims, it is "to take the stairs every time" and to walk up them with gusto and effort.

It can be any type of exercise, he says, however, the biggest benefits comes with roughly the equivalent of just under three hours of walking per day. He says that any sort of physical activity, and not necessarily only hard exercise, lowers blood pressure, which reduces risk of heart disease and stroke and other cardiovascular disease.

"It can reduce stress levels, which may improve immune responses, and it improves mood, which may prevent suicide and coping with the use of alcohol and other drugs, which have knock-on effects on health behaviours," he says.

He believes that it is not necessary to always hit the gym, or run marathons or even do a weekly 5km park run to extend our lives. It is easily achievable, by just being consistent and walking or climbing stairs. He said that these activities in the past have been "vastly underestimated", yet it is "enormously powerful" in boosting health outcomes.

The figures found in the study are based on time spent doing "walking equivalents", which could be at any movement, at any time of the day. In his words, "whatever made hip-worn accelerometer or tracker tick" was counted. Which is why the study is not limited to what we think of as exercise, but day-to-day activities like walking to the bus stop, pottering around the house. "Everything counts," he says.

"My main message is that any activity will make a massive difference, and the first steps give you the most benefit. If you’re currently doing very little, just a bit more activity will bring very attractive benefits that might help you live longer."

As per the World Health Organization, adults must get 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise. In UK, people spend their workhours deskbound, then sitting in a train or in the car on their way home. This is further elongated by sitting down in front of the TV. If estimates are to be believed, in 2019, an estimate showed annual death toll at 70,000 people a year with the health issues costing the NHS £700million each year to treat.

A 2023 paper published in the Atherosclerosis journal found that marching up and down more than five flights stairs a day was associated with better blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. This further proves Professor Veerman's point for a better life.