New study confirms: take the stairs and live longer
We need to change the way we design our buildings to make stairs easier to find and nicer to use.
Earlier this year I wrote In praise of stairs, noting that “Studies show that using them can add years to your life.” Now another study, Evaluating the cardiovascular benefits of stair climbing: a systematic review and meta-analysis, looks at a pile of research (725 studies) and comes to the same conclusion: “Physical activity in the form of stair climbing is associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular and all-cause mortality.” The study author, Dr. Sophie Paddock, says in a press release.
"If you have the choice of taking the stairs or the lift, go for the stairs as it will help your heart. Even brief bursts of physical activity have beneficial health impacts, and short bouts of stair climbing should be an achievable target to integrate into daily routines."
The studies included nearly half a million participants aged 53 to 84. Compared with not climbing stairs, stair climbing was associated with a 24% reduced risk of dying from any cause and a 39% lower likelihood of dying from cardiovascular disease. Stair climbing was also linked with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease including heart attack, heart failure and stroke. Dr. Paddock concludes:
"Based on these results, we would encourage people to incorporate stair climbing into their day-to-day lives. Our study suggested that the more stairs climbed, the greater the benefits -- but this needs to be confirmed. So, whether at work, home, or elsewhere, take the stairs."
I often complain that many North Americans get it backward, buying into senior sprawl where they get a big bungalow in the ‘burbs in “adult lifestyle communities” when the numbers show that you are far more likely to lose the ability to drive before you can’t climb stairs, so they get stuck in their boomer bungalow. The studies also show that the more stairs you climb, the longer you will be able to keep climbing them.
As always, it’s a design problem.
I know I repeat myself, but it is a design problem, and it is just going to get worse as the baby boomer cohort gets older.
Unfortunately, many people do reach the point where they can’t climb stairs, and like my late mother-in-law and a late aunt, have real problems in the last years of their lives when bedrooms, kitchens, and baths are on different levels.
This is why the European model of little apartment buildings with single stairs make so much sense. In Germany and Austria I have seen so many modern buildings with glorious open stairs wrapping around open atria with all the units opening onto the landings. Almost everyone uses the stairs for everything. There is an elevator for those who need it, but it is small, just big enough for a person in a wheelchair and an attendant.
Almost every building has an elevator, because they are small, prefabricated and cheap, a third the price of elevators in North America. (see more about this from Stephen Jacob Smith in the New York Times or in his guide to elevators). Smith notes that “Elevators in North America have become over-engineered, bespoke, handcrafted and expensive pieces of equipment that are unaffordable in all the places where they are most needed.” In Greece there are 41 elevators per 1,000 people; in the USA, only 3 because the majority of the population is living in single-family houses; no wonder elevators are expensive.
On the other hand, nobody wants to take the stairs in a North American building; as commenter Paul noted,
“I often opt for the stairs, yet it bothers me that no matter where I am, even some of the fanciest places around, when I enter the stairwell it is one of the bleakest surroundings possible, clanky metal stairs inside a blank white column, no design, no art, nothing.”
They are in shafts at the end of long corridors while the elevators are in the middle. They are often scary or even alarmed to keep people from using them. It’s much easier to make stairways attractive in single stair buildings where they are close to the unit entrances and there is only one.
In many European buildings, you get the best of both worlds; an attractive stair that people actually want to use, and an available elevator for when they can’t. The density in the district is high enough that there are grocery stores and other necessities within walking distance. Of course, there is fabulous transit; Seestadt in Vienna had a subway connection from the day it opened.
These building designs work for people of all ages; kids are always visible. I saw them playing in the corridors and going down the stairs to the playgrounds outside the buildings. Unfortunately, even as single-stair buildings get approved in North American jurisdictions, they are keeping the stairs separated from the corridors, no open atriums like this one. I aked Conrad Speckert of The Second Egress why this was the case; he said it was just too big a step, too much to ask.
But we really need to think about what we are building in North America, and how we are going to accommodate young people who can’t afford houses and old people who can’t stay in their suburban side splits. We need cities and housing that works for everyone.
Building and zoning codes have changed to allow higher wood frame and mass timber buildings, elimination of parking requirements, and even the end of single-family zoning restrictions. Add affordable teensy elevators and glorious stairs to the mix and we we could solve a lot of problems.
I am at a loss about what to do with comments. I have never believed in blocking people who have different points of view, and have a couple of commenters who have been the “loyal opposition” since my Treehugger days. But in the last post on carpeting, their position on ‘freedom of choice” went overboard, bashing expertise (I trust experts) and accusing me of wanting to ban everything including carpeting and gas stoves while defending asbestos and formaldehyde.
It’s exhausting me, and it is driving readers away. I am turning comments off for a while until I figure out what to do.