A measure of how fast you can climb stairs is quietly one of the best longevity tests

Nobody needs a laboratory to find out how a set of stairs feels by the third flight. That everyday experience turns out to double as a rough read on cardiorespiratory fitness, the capacity of the heart and lungs to deliver oxygen to working muscles, which decades of research link to the risk of dying from heart disease, cancer, and almost everything else. Cardiologists have spent years looking for a version of that lab test that ordinary people could try without a treadmill, an oxygen mask, or an appointment, and a simple stairwell has emerged as one of the better stand-ins.

Four Flights in Under a Minute Lines Up With a Lab-Grade Score

Researchers presenting at a European Society of Cardiology imaging congress asked 165 patients referred for treadmill exercise testing to also climb four flights of stairs, 60 steps total, at a fast but not running pace after resting from the treadmill session. Patients who completed the climb in 40 to 45 seconds or less had achieved more than 9 to 10 metabolic equivalents, or METs, on the treadmill, a level tied to an annual mortality rate of roughly 1 percent or less. Those who needed a minute and a half or longer averaged under 8 METs, a level associated with an annual mortality rate several times higher, according to the study findings reported by the European Society of Cardiology. Cardiologist Jesus Peteiro of University Hospital A Coruna in Spain, who led the work, described the stair climb as an inexpensive way for physicians to triage which patients need a more extensive workup.

The same study found that imaging of the heart during exercise, a separate marker of coronary artery disease, tracked with stair-climb time as well: 58 percent of patients who took more than 90 seconds to climb showed abnormal heart function during exertion, compared with 32 percent of those who finished in under a minute.

The American Heart Association Wants Fitness Treated as a Vital Sign

The stair test is a practical proxy for a more formal measurement called VO2 max, the maximum rate at which the body can consume oxygen during exertion, expressed in milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute. In 2016 the American Heart Association published a scientific statement in the journal Circulation arguing that cardiorespiratory fitness should be measured and recorded as routinely as blood pressure, pulse, or temperature, citing evidence that low fitness predicts cardiovascular disease and death about as strongly as, or more strongly than, smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes, according to the American Heart Association’s statement. The panel recommended that clinicians use a graded exercise test whenever possible and fall back on simpler field tests, including timed walks and stair climbs, when equipment or time is limited.

Every Extra MET Buys a Measurable Survival Edge

A 2023 meta-analysis pooling multiple observational cohort studies quantified just how much a fitness gain is worth. Each one-MET increase in estimated cardiorespiratory fitness was tied to an 11 percent reduction in all-cause mortality risk, and people in the top third of measured VO2 max scores had a 45 percent lower mortality rate than those in the bottom third, according to a summary of the analysis on Wikipedia’s VO2 max entry, which cites the underlying Mayo Clinic Proceedings research. An untrained healthy adult male typically registers a VO2 max near 35 to 40 milliliters per kilogram per minute, while an untrained healthy adult female typically registers closer to 27 to 31, figures that decline with age but can be raised through sustained aerobic training regardless of a person’s starting point. Elite endurance athletes sit at a different extreme entirely, with competitive distance runners and cross-country skiers regularly exceeding 70 to 80 milliliters per kilogram per minute, a range that illustrates how wide the gap can be between an average adult and someone whose sport depends on maximizing oxygen delivery.

Why the Full Lab Version Rarely Makes It Into a Checkup

Despite the American Heart Association’s recommendation, VO2 max is still rarely measured in routine clinical visits. A true laboratory test requires a treadmill or cycle ergometer, a mask that captures inhaled and exhaled gas, and staff trained to push a patient to genuine exhaustion under supervision, resources most primary care offices do not have on hand. That gap is exactly what makes a stair climb appealing as a screening shortcut: it needs no equipment beyond a stairwell and a stopwatch, and the Spanish study’s authors noted the timing would likely translate to even more favorable numbers in a general population than in the symptomatic cardiac patients they studied. Formulas that estimate VO2 max from a timed one-mile walk, a 12-minute run, or the ratio between maximum and resting heart rate exist for the same reason, trading some precision for a test that almost anyone can attempt without specialized equipment.

None of these shortcuts replace a supervised exercise test for someone with existing heart symptoms, and a slow stair climb on its own does not diagnose a specific disease. What the research supports is narrower: cardiorespiratory fitness, however it gets measured, tracks long-term survival closely enough that clinicians increasingly treat it as a number worth knowing, in the same category as a blood pressure reading rather than a fitness-magazine curiosity. Peteiro’s team framed the stairwell version specifically as a triage tool, meant to flag who might benefit from a closer look rather than to hand anyone a verdict on their own heart health after a single climb.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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