Is your heart healthy? To check it, cardiologists offer a test that takes less than two minutes and does not require other equipment than a staircase.

How to do ? Start a stopwatch and try to climb four floors: if it takes less than a minute, it means that your heart is healthy.

Read also: Five tips to take care of your heart

Consult from a minute and a half

On the other hand, “if it takes more than a minute and a half to climb four floors, your health is not optimal and it would be a good idea to see a doctor“warns Doctor Jesus Peteiro, cardiologist at the University Hospital of Cordoba, Spain.

This advice stems from a study Dr. Peteiro and his colleagues conducted on the link between daily physical activity and heart health. They present their results to the congress of the European Society of Cardiology Best of Imaging 2020 which is currently being held.

Objective: 45 seconds, without running!

Their goal was to define a simple exercise to perform but effective to assess the capacities of the heart. Their study involved 165 patients treated for known or suspected coronary heart disease. After several heart exams, patients were asked to climb four floors (60 steps) at a rapid pace without stopping, but also without running, and the time was recorded.

The result: The patients who took less than 45 seconds to climb these four floors were the ones with the best cardiac results. But those who took longer than a minute and a half were mostly those who showed abnormal heart function during exams.

A correlation that probably applies more broadly to the entire population, according to the researchers.