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Posted on Tue, Nov. 10, 2009

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Pulmonologist prescribes stairs for exercise

BY SAM McMANIS

McClatchy Newspapers

SACRAMENTO, Calif. —Sometimes, late at night in the hospital when no one is around to bear witness, Peter Murphy will see an open elevator door just waiting for a passenger.

"It does look relatively attractive," Murphy, 62, concedes.

Yet commitment triumphs over convenience every time. Murphy, a pulmonologist at Mercy San Juan Medical Center, made a vow nearly eight years ago to eschew the elevator at work in favor of the stairs.

Call it a gesture for health — the man is, after all, a doctor specializing in breathing issues — but also another in a series of physical challenges Murphy has undertaken.

Compared with the marathons Murphy has run and the legs of the Tour de France that he's ridden with friends on vacations, taking the stairs would seem a rather pedestrian accomplishment.

"Yes, but that's the thing," Murphy says. "When most people in this country think about exercise, they think all or nothing — going out and running marathons. Frankly, probably 30 minutes of exercise five days a week would be incredibly helpful to most people's well-being."

Murphy just wants people at work or at shopping malls or hotels to stop taking the lazy person's way up (the elevator, the escalator) and get vertical under human power.

"My idea is, basically, to incorporate exercise into your life," he says. "I think, frankly, that it's way, way easier done than most people think.

"For instance, try parking your car at the farther end of the parking lot instead of up close. Think about walking where we now use cars and other modalities of transport. You can very easily, with very minimum effort, incorporate a substantial amount of exercise into your life and do it in a relatively nonintrusive, nonboring way."

At the six-story Mercy San Juan, Murphy works on the second floor. But he's up and down a lot, making rounds to various floors.

Murphy's stair-taking occasionally draws stares from co-workers unaware of his resolution, which has been in place since Jan. 1, 2002. Sometimes, colleagues will hold the elevator doors for Murphy and motion for him to join them.

Murphy says the stairs at Mercy San Juan are convenient and in good shape. The same can't be said for stairs in many of the nation's office buildings.

Building designers apparently haven't been stair-friendly, according to a study published in last summer's Southern Medical Journal. Co-authors Dr. Ishak A. Mansi of the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, Shreveport, and his wife, architect Nardine M. Mansi, called for builders to make the stairs the star of office buildings, department stores and the like.