A sudden change in breathing—like dyspnea, or shortness of breath, for no apparent reason—can cause concern. While being out of breath when walking up stairs may catch you off guard too, it’s normal to feel breathless after exerting yourself.1
However, other factors, like various medical conditions and the environment, may be responsible for your breathlessness. There are also ways to increase your endurance and make climbing stairs easier, like aerobic and lower body exercises. Read on to learn more.
Why Stairs Make You Breathless
If you take a flight of stairs, breathlessness can result from hard work from your heart and lungs. Ascending stairs immediately affects your heart and lung endurance.
Your lungs help get oxygen to your blood while your heart pumps oxygenated blood throughout your body Physical activity demands more of these two organs. Being active requires more oxygen transport to the muscles.
Shortness of breath can result from using a lot of energy too.5 People need a lot of energy to climb stairs. Going up a flight of stairs makes them move their body weight with their leg muscles.
Researchers have also found that continuously climbing stairs requires over nine times the energy needed for sitting. Even slow stair climbing requires more energy compared to sitting.
