In the previous post, I talked about one reason why stair is more beneficial than elevators. In this post, I will talk about more reasons.
Stair climbing moreover benefits mental health, for it positively influences the state of the mood of the climbers and changes their overall emotions. According to Andreas Stenling, a psychology professor at Umeå University, stair climbing produced increases in short-term positive mood states such as energetic and calm mood states, and decreases in short-term negative mood states, including tired and depressing mood states. Stenling further states that these short-term mood states consequently contributed to establishing the permanent emotion of the people: his experiment instructed 32 adolescents and young adults to assess their emotions using the VAMS system, or the visual analogue mood scales that help to visualize the status of emotion in numeric values. VMAS showed that the mean value of people who responded for having sad emotions analog without stair climbing marked 14.88, while the mean value of people who responded for having a sad emotion with stair climbing for 6 weeks marked 12.91. Conversely, people who responded for having a happy emotion without stair climbing marked 57.03, while people who responded for having a happy emotion with stair climbing marked 62.28. Matthew D Jones, professor of physical science at the University of Nottingham, states that stair climbing is also helpful for mental health, for it increases pain tolerance and sensitivity. His experiment incorporated 24 participants and showed an increase in pain tolerance for those who worked on 6 weeks of structured stair climbing exercise training compared to the control group. This is significant, as pain is an unpleasant emotional or sensory experience and being able to endure pain means the feeling of unpleasantness becomes less significant, according to Donatella Marazziti, a member of the World Psychiatric Association. He claims that this allows adolescents to quickly recover from hardships, whether in emotional means or any kind of personal achievement (46).
In addition to these results, stair climbing can even bring a substantial improvement in the musculoskeletal system. Stuart Phillips, a co-author of the studies and a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster, who oversaw the analysis of muscle tissue taken during the study, stated, “Even in just a short period, whether it was moderate-intensity, continuous training or high- intensity stair climbing, there was a beneficial adaptation in muscles after a cardiac procedure.” Such studies substantiate that stair climbing has substantial benefits on people’s physical health, which will also apply to students' physical health. William Morrison, the Musculoskeletal Radiology professor at Jefferson University Hospitals, claims that stair-climbing exercises engage more muscles compared to walking, or even running. Stair climbing specifically requires muscles in the leg, glutes, quadriceps, calves, abdomen, and hamstrings to work together. This is important, for strengthening leg muscles and can assist joint movement (Morrison). Stair exercise also enhances bone function, for it increases the density of the bone. According to Ahmad H. Alghadir, a professor from the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences in Chair King Saud University, stair exercise assists information of the essential structures in the bone by “increasing the cortical enlargement periosteally and by preventing age-related bone loss at the endosteal surfaces”. He further claims that this leads to an increase in bone mineral density (BMD). Michale R. McClung MD, the Founding Director of the Oregon Osteoporosis Center in Portland, elaborates on the significance of Alghadir’s study by explaining the importance of having a high bone mineral density. He claimed that those with low bone density have a higher risk of being diagnosed with osteoporosis, a health condition that makes bone fragile and more likely to break. Weak bone directly impacts people’s lifestyle, for it accompanies severe back pain when they are standing, walking, or even lying down.
Writer: Amy Jeong
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