Something Diabetics and Hypertensives Should Know about Climbing Up and Down Stairs

From Livestrong Website

A study presented at the American Heart Association showed how walking downhill (going down stairs, for instance) improved blood sugar levels. While walking up stairs improved fat levels in blood.

Thus, if you go up and down stairs, there is a huge chance you may normalize your lipid and glucose levels in your blood.

Well, the study was done on the mountains of Austria, but it also said you don't need to do this in the mountains or hills. Just look for uphill streets or stairs and it would work as effective. God blessed my neighborhood with uphill streets so this is easy for me. It may be the reason why I always have normal blood sugar and blood lipd readings, especially triglyceride. Thank God!

But I also climb up strairs. If you want something more strenuous, try climbing up and down stairs. I tried this at SM North, Walter Mart and even at the Philippine Heart Center along East Avenue---in case a heart problem suddenly occured, hehehe. Just kidding.

Make sure your doctor gives you a go signal before doing this. Look for a building near your place and ask the owner if you could just drop by everyday to climb up and down its stairs. Then do the exercise. Or, go to the nearest mall. Better if you have a street in your vicinity that goes uphill.

The study showed that walking downhill improved the subjects' glucose tolerance by 8.2 percent. Uphill walking improved it by only 4.5 percent. However, uphill walking, according to the study, lowered the triglyceride levels of the subjects by 11 percent. But they only had a 6.8 percent improvement when they walked downhill.

How did the researches explain this? They thought it had to do with using more concentric muscle power when going uphill and more eccentric power when going downhill. Obviously, more studies need to be done to establish the internal processes behind it. 

To be sure, climbing up and down stairs is healthy (but make sure your heart physician approves of it).

You don't need a high stairs to do this. A two-level building would do. A stairs with 13 to 15 steps ought to do it for beginners. The stairs at Walter Mart in Munoz has about 20. The ones at SM North and Heart Center have more.

Do it slowly at first---sometimes, even really slow. No need to hurry up. Then, as you build more power and heart and lung strength (after probably a week or so), do it a bit faster. 

Doing it on footbridges should be ideal but the problem is pollution from traffic. So I'd rather do it in malls or in subdivisions with plenty of trees, like our place.

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