Effects of Stair Climbing on Blood Pressure, Lipid Profiles, and Physical Fitness

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to identify the effects of worker’s stair-climbing on blood pressure, lipid profiles, and physical fitness. Methods: After recruiting 114 healthy adult women aged 20 to 64 years who have had sedentary for more than 3 months, we divided into two groups: the stair group (SG, n=57) and control group (CG, n=57). SG was supposed to do stair-climbing in daily life like workplace and home for 12 weeks. To investigate the effects of the lifestyle changing of stair-climbing, resting blood pressure, heart rate (HR), and lipid profiles were measured before and after 12-week stair-climbing. Also, physical fitness items such as peak oxygen consumption (VO2peak), back muscle strength, sit and reach, isokinetic strength of knee joint, static and dynamic balance were measured. Results: As a result of the 12-week lifestyle changing of stair-climbing, resting systolic blood pressure (SBP; p<0.05) and HR (p<0.01) were significantly decreased in SG. Low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) was significantly reduced in SG (p<0.05). There was a significant improvement in the VO2peak (p<0.001). There were a significant improvement in back strength (p<0.001) and bilateral knee extensor (60/sec: p<0.05, p<0.01, 180/sec: p<0.01, p<0.01) and knee flexor (180/sec: p<0.01, p<0.05) of isokinetic strength. There were significant improvements in static balance of one leg standing eye-closed (p<0.05) and dynamic balance of left/right velocity (p<0.01), forward/backward velocity (p<0.01). Conclusion: In this study, 12 weeks of lifestyle changing of stair-climbing improved SBP, resting HR, LDL-C, VO2peak, back and knee strength, static and dynamic balance as well as increased physical activity volume of stair-climbing in the daily living.