A healthy life is a few steps away (From Surrey Comet)

A healthy life is a few steps away

2:27pm Saturday 6th October 2007

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We all know it would do us good, but how many of us out on a busy day's shopping would actually take the stairs rather than a lift or escalator?

Kingston University lecturer Oliver Webb reckons his research has cracked the secret of how to promote exercise to people who wouldn't be seen dead working out.

“The exciting discovery was that we looked at the number of people coming down the stairs, and though they couldn’t see the signs, they were still using the stairs.”

Oliver Webb

He said: "I'm not interested in getting people to go to the gym.

"Instead people should find the time to do small amounts of physical activity to make it part and parcel of everyday life."

As part of his PhD thesis, Mr Webb installed brightly-coloured signs on a staircase in a shopping centre with health messages, such as "seven minutes of stair climbing daily protects your heart". He found that over three weeks stair climbing increased by 190 per cent on the staircase that carried one of these messages, and by 52 per cent on a nearby, sign-free flight of stairs.

Mr Webb added that the message stayed with shoppers for some time after they had seen the signs. He said: "The exciting discovery was that we looked at the number of people coming down the stairs, and though they couldn't see the signs, they were still using the stairs."

But shoppers will not be seeing these signs up in Kingston in the near future, according to Bob Ritchie, manager of the Bentall Centre. He said: "I would suggest that the opportunity for using it would be limited as we don't have many stairs here."

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