MUNICH — “No thanks, I'll take the stairs instead,” was the catch-phrase at the University Hospital, Geneva, last year as physicians and nurses in the Geneva stair study eschewed elevators for foot power.
The study was set up to test a population-based strategy for increasing physical activity that's easy to incorporate in the workplace, where most adults spend half their waking hours, Dr. Philippe Meyer said at the annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology.
The payoff from the 3-month intervention was significant reductions in waist circumference, diastolic blood pressure, body weight, fat mass, and LDL cholesterol, and increased aerobic capacity as measured by maximum oxygen uptake, or VO2 max, said Dr. Meyer of the University of Geneva.
The need to increase physical activity in the broad population arises from surveys showing that fewer than half of Europeans and Americans meet current public health guidelines recommending a minimum of 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity 5 days a week as rates of obesity, dyslipidemia, and diabetes continue to climb.
The study included 77 physicians and nurses with a sedentary lifestyle, defined as less than 2 hours of exercise weekly and less than 10 flights of stairs covered a day. They had to use stairs exclusively instead of elevators at work for 12 weeks. The hospital building is 12 stories; most subjects worked on the first 7 floors. They wore badges with a staircase diary printed on the back.
The 42 women and 35 men in the study averaged 43 years of age, with a mean body mass index of 25.7 kg/m
The participants' combined daily ascent and descent of stairs jumped from a mean of 5.1 floors at baseline to 22.7 floors daily. Over 12 weeks, the 69 subjects who completed the study experienced a significant reduction in waist circumference, from a mean of 87.9 cm to 86.4 cm. Their mean weight dropped from 74.4 kg to 73.9 kg; this included a 350-g mean reduction in body fat.
Particularly impressive was the gain in aerobic capacity: mean VO2 max rose from 37.3 mL/kg per minute to 40.5 mL/kg per minute, an 8.6% increase. This corresponds to a gain of nearly 1 metabolic equivalent. When maintained long term, an increase of this magnitude has been shown to confer a 14%–15% reduction in all-cause mortality, Dr. Meyer noted.
They also experienced a mean 1.8 mm Hg decrease in diastolic blood pressure, a 3.9% reduction in LDL level, and favorable but nonsignificant trends with regard to systolic blood pressure, triglycerides, and HDL cholesterol. “At the population level, this could lead to significant cardiovascular preventive effects,” he observed.
At 6 months' follow-up—3 months after the intervention's end—the mean number of floors of stairs covered daily declined to 10. The only benefits at 3 months that remained statistically significant at 6 months were the gain in aerobic capacity—VO2 max was still 5.6% improved over baseline—and the reduction in fat mass. However, the 6-month data are misleading because at the end of the 12-week inter-vention, the building's main staircase was closed for renovation. Dr. Meyer cited lack of a control group as another limitation.