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My office is at the 9th floor. While everyone uses the elevator, I thought of using the stars instead.

Is it a healthy choice to climb up 9 storeys everyday with the following conditions?

  • Each floor is around 4.5 m tall (~15 ft)
  • I carry a backpack of around 7 kg (~15 lbs)
  • Only once in the morning

With the following assumptions:

  • Average healthy male
  • No history of bone injuries or breathing difficulties

Is this good for health or would it deteriorate the bones in the long term?

Is there any study stating walking upstairs can lead to bone/cartilage deterioration for an average person?

Ébe Isaac
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  • People do far more laborious exercising daily. In fact, we go to a gym and seek it out. All physical exercise deteriorates bone health to a certain degree, but then we eat and rest to allow the body to repair and recover. Are you having any issues with the stair climb? Pain? Exhaustion? I'm not sure what the context of this question is. – Alec Feb 01 '20 at 12:31
  • @Alec, I do not feel significant pain or exhaustion after the exercise. Only that a few are concerned that it might be adversely affecting my bones in the long run. If you have data to support or against the claim, please answer with adequate detail. It would be of great help for me. – Ébe Isaac Feb 01 '20 at 12:34
  • Health doesn't work like that. You can live a very unhealthy lifestyle and still climb up the stairs. You can be healthy and not do that. It can hurt you even depending on many, many conditions. Go about this another way. What do you promise yourself from walking up the stairs? What are your goals? Do you have any reason to worry about your bones? Do you feel pain afterwards? – Raditz_35 Feb 01 '20 at 12:41
  • I'm not sure where to start finding sources for this. I mean, look at anyone who goes to the gym and works out for an hour and half. They all perform much more intensive workouts than this. A lot of gyms even have stair machines, because it's such a good exercise. But that doesn't mean that simply walking up stairs is going to give you a noticeable health benefit. Maintaining a healthy body requires a bit more effort than that. – Alec Feb 01 '20 at 12:42
  • I agree, @Alec, the question is not that doing this is enough, but would there be any long term detrimental effects because of it. I do mild bodyweight exercises and lift up to 10 kg dumbbells and no one complains. But this seems to be of topic among my family. I couldn’t find any concrete data for this exact claim other than “walking upstairs is good for you” I clearly want to know how much is too much. – Ébe Isaac Feb 01 '20 at 12:49
  • I see your point, but the question becomes unanswerable. There is no number such that we can say that X storeys is too much for everyone. It's a different number for different people, and we have no way of determining what yours would be. But at the end of the day, walking stairs is generally good. However, I can't make a definitive answer out of it, because I don't know if your knees and hips are generally healthy, or if you have muscular imbalances that can be aggravated by this. Or if the cartilage in your joints are particularly susceptible to damage. – Alec Feb 01 '20 at 14:08
  • Any "is it OK to...?" question is really "is it OK for ME to...?", which unfortunately is impossible to answer over the Internet. I'm sorry your question seems to be dismissed like this, but on the bright side, it can be answered by just doing it, and seeing how you feel then and there. If it feels fine, it's probably great. If you start to feel pain or discomfort, it's probably not, and you should see a doctor. – Alec Feb 01 '20 at 14:10
  • Added the assumptions for clarity, @Alec. I’m in the belief that a medical practitioner or a fitness expert can answer this in this site. Hoping for the best :) – Ébe Isaac Feb 01 '20 at 14:21
  • @Raditz_35, although I agree with flawed studies used as marketing and publicity gimmicks, I cannot discard it completely as a scientist. Many of the activities we follow come from some sort of scientific study that one has applied in practice and proven to work. I see many answers from reputed users in this site citing sources for their views too. Nevertheless I still believe an expert in this SE can give some sort of advice that would prove useful to me. – Ébe Isaac Feb 01 '20 at 16:51
  • There is using a thing and abusing a thing. I deleted my comments because do whatever you want, this is not the place for my rants, however this is not how to get a good use out of science. You are of course right, many good things developed out of science, there is no doubt. But it's overused and I frankly don't see how science helps you here. Idealism is fine, but really, it's not the solution to such problems. The issue at hand is too complex, too many people train much heavier without issues and it would be such a waste of taxes to find a definitive and clear answer here – Raditz_35 Feb 01 '20 at 17:58
  • If in doubt, ask your doctor. If you are healthy, he will almost certainly say it is not only OK, but good for you. My doctor told me not to climb stairs as an exercise, but I am much, much older than you with slight knee issues. – Mattman944 Feb 03 '20 at 19:07

1 Answers1

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Yes, it is considered healthy.

According to this study, even taking a few dozens of steps will improve your fitness, at least for men.

Furthermore, according to this study, several minutes of stair climbing will improve your health even more: "We know that sprint interval training works, but we were a bit surprised to see that the stair snacking approach was also effective," says Jonathan Little, assistant professor at UBC's Okanagan campus and study co-author. "Vigorously climbing a few flights of stairs on your coffee or bathroom break during the day seems to be enough to boost fitness in people who are otherwise sedentary."

And finally, as a result of the daily stair climbing you'll be able to climb more and more stairs. Therefore, you would perform better in a stair climbing test, which is the ultimate health test according to this article.

As far as for cartilage damage, if you aren't heavily overweight or suffering from arthritis or osteoporosis, you don't have to fear anything. People who get these kind of damages are often too heavy or overtraining a lot. In fact, climbing stairs or hills is actually even healthier than ground-level running for all your joints and cartilage, because the training effect per step is much higher and you are using more energy compared to running at ground-level. That's why experienced jogger like to climb hills, it's much less stress on your joints, combined with an increased training effect (although I'd suggest you to walk downwards, not running...yet here are some tips to run downhill better).

Note that it may look different if you'd be running up these 9 storeys, because in that case the risk of injuries might be increased, at least if you are not a well trained athlete.

As a final conclusion, I'd suggest to you walking up the stairs but not down in order to be on the safe side.

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