Cycling To Work Can Cut Cancer and Heart Disease (bbc.com) 233
randomErr quotes a report from BBC: Want to live longer? Reduce your risk of cancer? And heart disease? Then cycle to work, say scientists. The five-year study of 250,000 UK commuters also showed walking had some benefits over sitting on public transport or taking the car. Published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) today, the University of Glasgow study compared those who had an "active" commute with those who were mostly stationary. Overall, 2,430 of those studied died, 3,748 were diagnosed with cancer and 1,110 had heart problems. But, during the course of the study, regular cycling cut the risk of death from any cause by 41%, the incidence of cancer by 45% and heart disease by 46%. The cyclists clocked an average of 30 miles per week, but the further they cycled the greater the health boon. However, the effect was still there even after adjusting the statistics to remove the effects of other potential explanations like smoking, diet or how heavy people are.
who knew (Score:5, Funny)
news at 11, exercise leads to better health
now take your bike and shove it up your ass, my work is 30 miles away, its fucking hot in my part of the world and there are a lot of hills
Re: who knew (Score:2, Insightful)
It does however increase the risk of being hit by a car and getting a horrible head injury so maybe not perfect.
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Pedestrians are slightly more likely to suffer a head injury than cyclists per mile travelled.
Car drivers are more likely to be hit by a car than cyclists in general. (Cyclists more likely per mile travelled, but generally they use safer transport like trains for longer distances)
Cyclists overall live much longer lives. So any head injury risk is completely outweighed by the risk of cardiac arrest, cancer, suicide caused by depression, getting stuck in a doorway and starving to death cos you're too fat, etc
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Pedestrians are slightly more likely to suffer a head injury than cyclists per mile travelled.
Car drivers are more likely to be hit by a car than cyclists in general. (Cyclists more likely per mile travelled, but generally they use safer transport like trains for longer distances)
Cyclists overall live much longer lives. So any head injury risk is completely outweighed by the risk of cardiac arrest, cancer, suicide caused by depression, getting stuck in a doorway and starving to death cos you're too fat, etc, etc
All true, but it is still fact that the more you cycle, the more likely it is to injure or kill you.
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Re: who knew (Score:2)
I work from home as well.
It really helps to keep a routine when you work from home. I walk my kids to school when it's nice out (too cold most of the winter), and their not on holidays.
During the summer, while my kids are not in school, it's much more difficult. I think the worst part is the constant feeling that I have to work on all stuff outdoors. Today, in between some scheduled calls, I fixed a gate on my fence, laid tarps over my veggie garden to stop weeds from germinating, and lubed up the parts tha
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I walk my kids to school when it's nice out (too cold most of the winter)
Unless it get's to -60C where you are, it's not too cold. You're just putting comfort in front of health and rationalizing it.
Re: who knew (Score:2)
Do you count the "Windchill Factor"? If so, yes it does get to -60C, and -45C without.
Besides, it's not MY comfort, its my childrens comfort. Seeing as they are both under 10, theit bodies can not handle the cold nearly as well as I can. Personally, I rather enjoy the cold.
Boy Slashdot is full of a bunch of ignorant pricks lately.
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No. But if you want, you can always stack the -43C with the -68C windchill that I went through this winter and my nephews and nieces. And that type of weather was the same type of weather I went through as a kid, under 10. I even fondly remember the -35C days when we'd go outside and play in it. Even those days when we were still required to go outside for things like recess in that cold weather.
Oops. How are you enjoying that ignorance?
Re: who knew (Score:2)
Looking through your post history, you're in Ontario.
I know for a fact that Ontario never stays that cold, I don't care how north you are. A couple of days, maybe, then you're done.
Come try a Saskatchewan winter on for size.
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Good thing you're showing your ignorance. I wouldn't want to let things like "the ability to move" or "having to work elsewhere." Why don't you come try a northern alberta winter on for size? You can even have a place right in the foothills of the mountains [imgur.com], enjoy the sudden 4ft snowfalls in a 18hrs period to boot. Just a useful tip: You have between 4 days and 2 weeks before the first blast of winter hits in middle to late September or sometimes early October when the first white show up on the peaks.
Re: who knew (Score:2)
Sounds like you just did a bunch of research on the colder places in Canada.
Your post history, literally from the last day or two hours, indicates you're in Ontario.
Living in a small town in Saskatchewan, I experience what you've described every year. Year after year. The only difference is I have a relatively decent sized center about 40 minutes away.
I built my own business up from nothing, specifically so I wouldn't have to move away from here, because one of the few things I actually enjoy here is the co
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Poor donkey! :P
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Excuses, excuses. Perhaps you should have thought about moving closer to your job, or getting a job closer to your home, so that you could make a daily bike ride a part of your exercise routine.
If you have one.
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This. The thread is full of excuses. To make matters worse, the excuses for doing nothing to help ones own health means that people are happy to run the risk of earlier than needed death whilst also adding to global warming. Also, with that shorter life, you're spending the majority of the working day couped up in a car.
Using a bike to work is a great way of turning that commute into exercise, you arrive on the premise with a better level of dopamine and adrenaline, but that time went towards extending your
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The thread is full of excuses.
Most people can't afford to live closer to work. They wouldn't save enough money to live closer even if they didn't commute by car. That is in fact the primary reason they live far enough away to where they can't bike, and have to commute by car to begin with. It's all well and good to snark about "excuses" but some of these things are explanations, not excuses. Our whole society is designed to be self-deflagrating, and calling it "excuses" when people complain about that is, in short, a dick move that won'
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The thread is full of excuses.
Most people can't afford to live closer to work. They wouldn't save enough money to live closer even if they didn't commute by car. That is in fact the primary reason they live far enough away to where they can't bike, and have to commute by car to begin with. It's all well and good to snark about "excuses" but some of these things are explanations, not excuses. Our whole society is designed to be self-deflagrating, and calling it "excuses" when people complain about that is, in short, a dick move that won't win you any friends.
Note that I have never had a commute longer than about fifteen minutes, so I'm not making excuses for myself, either. I'm trying to help you understand how the world works, even though you're willfully ignorant.
Really? So it's too expensive to get a train and then commute by cycle from station to door then?
In this country (where the study was performed) the driver is almost taxed off the road by MOT, Vehicle Excise Duty, fuel duty, insurance then there's the car parking fees in the cities after that (assuming you can park freely at home), plus running costs, all of which would include VAT at some stage also. You could negate just the vehicle excise duty with the cost of the bike alone, before you start talking all
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30 miles is just a light warming for a strong cyclist.
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Well, I guess the moral of the story for you is: suffer or die.
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My job is 20 miles and 4 valleys away. To add to that a vehicle "in good working order and an acceptable license" are required as a term of my employment.
I can think of a few environmentalist cranks who would encourage people in such a situation to get a different job.
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My job is 20 miles and 4 valleys away. To add to that a vehicle "in good working order and an acceptable license" are required as a term of my employment.
I can think of a few environmentalist cranks who would encourage people in such a situation to get a different job.
Or live closer to work.
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I can think of a few environmentalist cranks who would encourage people in such a situation to get a different job.
They are cranks, because jobs worth having are scarce these days. Even if I worked for Exxon I wouldn't be giving that shit up.
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Time is an issue for me, and I live about the same distance away as my friend. So what I do is drive part way, park the car then cycle the rest of the way. It takes the same amount of time as the bus, I don't have to pay for parking, AND I get a free 1.5 hour workout every day.
On-site service; cargo (Score:2)
Moving closer doesn't help if it is part of your job description to visit clients' land or haul more work equipment than will fit in a reasonable bike trailer.
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Moving closer doesn't help if it is part of your job description to visit clients' land or haul more work equipment than will fit in a reasonable bike trailer.
You could commute by bike and leave your car at work if that was really what's holding you back from bike commuting.
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It's not obviously practical for everyone, but I'm sure the same health benefits would be found from routine recreational cycling. My largest issue was just getting bored on my bike ride, but using an app like Strava or playing a game like Ingress/Pokemon Go definitely changed things. The main thing is to not get discouraged when you first start - but after a week or so of regular cycling the barrier to just getting out there and doing it quickly gets considerably lower.
Re:On-site service; cargo (Score:4, Informative)
Moving closer doesn't help if it is part of your job description to visit clients' land or haul more work equipment than will fit in a reasonable bike trailer.
The major downside: if you don't ride your bike, the public will miss getting to see you in the tight black spandex that all bikers seem to feel a compulsion to wear. The gay community in particular will be disappointed. In the name of tolerance you should not disappoint the gay community. Therefore car travel is a bigoted idea and supports hatred of LGBT people. So you see, you must bike, for the good of the society!
It's lycra, not spandex, and few commuters wear full-on bike gear. Most people wear the same clothes they wear at work. It's the recreational riders that are more likely to wear bike gear... and there's a good reason for it -- similar to why few people wear jeans to lift weights at the gym.
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It's lycra, not spandex
Spandex is the American term, Lyra's a British term. Elastane is the European term.
Re:On-site service; cargo (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but few strength training exercises require sticking your ass up in the air and waving it back and forth like that.
Straight leg dead lift. bent rows, and back hyperextension off the top of my head. And while we're on the subject of distracting and embarrassing, there's always leg abduction.
Anyhow, people are jerks toward anyone who gets serious about anything, whether it's biking, power lifting, or building electronics. You're supposed to be normal, not exceptional. That makes it easy to be a sanctimonious prig toward people who like things you don't have what it takes to try.
Ever go to a gym where there's rules about making too much noise because you'll scare the casuals? It's stupid. There's a woman in my gym, an ex-marine, who can dead lift over 2 1/2 her body weight, which for a woman puts her in the elite range. When I walk into the gym and she's doing it, I have to walk out because she sounds like a harpy ripping the head off a dragon. But it's my problem, not hers. That's what it takes for her to do her thing, and I'm not going to make her feel bad about it because it's awesome. Literally.
Celebrate people who dare to look, sound, or even be ridiculous. Even if it bothers you, that's not the same thing as harming you. The people who do harm are the self-appointed conformity police. The ones who automatically go after anyone who doesn't appear normal. "Normal" is must another word for "mediocre".
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I used to bike to work (~30 minutes, about 100m of altitude gain) in my normal clothes.
Not any more. First, it wears out normal clothes at a much faster pace and they become smelly faster.
Bike wear makes for a more relaxed ride.
I don't give a shit what others think. Especially if they are easily offended.
But then, 30% of the inhabitants in the city I work have no car at all.
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Nevertheless, the article is a good one. Biking daily is good for you. I commute to work on a bike, and it generally feels great.
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Good for you. I used to jog every day. I NEVER felt great after jogging. It was always a chore and it never got easier. If some people feel great after biking then good for them, they are lucky. But they should never browbeat others to join their cult.
cut the risk of death from any cause by 41% (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: cut the risk of death from any cause by 41% (Score:5, Funny)
ANY?
Yup, Any.
Basically some dedicated bicyclists never die.
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I had the same reaction ... ANY?
Here's the actual study: http://www.bmj.com/content/357... [bmj.com]
I'm having some difficulty pulling out the raw numbers from the actual study, so I'll make up some nearly correct number to show the example.
What they mean is that during the study period of the 250,000 participants, 2,500 died which is 1% risk of death during the study period.
Of that 250,000 people, 10,000 commuted to work on bicycles. Of the 10,000 cyclists, 59 died for a 41% reduction in risk of death during the stu
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outweigh any of the additional risks
If that includes getting run over by a transit bus, the benefits must be truly remarkable.
Re: cut the risk of death from any cause by 41% (Score:4, Insightful)
outweigh any of the additional risks
If that includes getting run over by a transit bus, the benefits must be truly remarkable.
You ought to look up "risk" -- few cyclists will be run over by a transit bus. And it's not like a car commute is free of risk.
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My cousin's husband was an avid cyclist. He was hit by a school bus and killed instantly. Transit buses don't have a monopoly on killing cyclists. School buses are good for it too!
Hey, what a coincidence, my cousin died from the same thing, except she was driving a car, and she didn't die instantly she was initially conscious, but she passed away before rescuers could extricate her from the car.
Interesting... (Score:2)
regular cycling cut the risk of death from any cause by 41%
I would have thought it would increase your risk of death by being hit by a car.
In all seriousness though, people are not really designed for the type of lifestyle we live today in the modern world. We weren't meant to sit all day long and stare at a monitor. It would be interesting to know what cycling to and from work does in regards to stress relief too.
It would be... (Score:4, Insightful)
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It would be a lot easier if cagers weren't so fucking stupid and inconsiderate assholes. It's friday, so just go to youtube and you can see a million examples of what I'm talking about.
About 50% of cyclists I pass are doing something stupid, from swerving all over to simply riding out in the middle of the road. And then there's all the times I've been one of more than five vehicles stuck behind a cycle on a minor highway, with them smugly taking up the whole lane in a twisty section. Except the law requires that any vehicle on a highway be pulled over at the first safe opportunity to permit passing when five vehicles are being held up by it (regardless of speed) and for a bicycle it is sa
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In most places, cyclists have full use of the lane. Cyclists generally don't take advantage of that right in order to help traffic along, but when they do, they usually have a good reason for it. So, contain your road rage.
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In most places, cyclists have full use of the lane.
Yeah, that's not what I'm talking about.
So, contain your road rage.
I haven't run over even the most inconsiderate, out-of-control, law-breaking cyclist yet.
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With your bad attitude, it's only a matter off time. At least juries will be able to find a record of your views here.
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With your bad attitude, it's only a matter off time. At least juries will be able to find a record of your views here.
As I have repeatedly spoken against people who take violent acts against cyclists, they should serve to exonerate me if some dipshit cyclist should splatter themselves all over my hood, but I really ought to have a dash cam. I can abhor incompetent and thoughtless cyclists while still not running them over. Can you read a condemnation of such people without your knee jerking?
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I frequently bike to work, and it's jerks like you that give cyclists a bad name and cause accidents.
Change your attitude.
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When I was growing up, we were taught to ride out bikes on the sidewalk since it was safer.
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I know, I know. I am just saying that as a kid a long time ago, in a small town and not a city, that is what we were told to do. We didn't have that many pedestrians in residential areas and there were easy to see. It was easier to see cars backing out of their house driveway from the sidewalk than from the road where all the parked cars block your view. Cyclists meant 95% kids, they were not going full speed like modern tour-de-commute racers. There were ZERO bike lanes.
The reasoning to be on sidewalks wa
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When I was growing up, we were taught to ride out bikes on the sidewalk since it was safer.
Cycling on the sidewalk is much less safe -- most cyclists are hit in intersections, and on a sidewalk every driveway is an intersection, worse, many drivers don't even look before backing out into the sidewalk. Even as a runner I've had many more close calls on the sidewalk with cars pulling out across the sidewalk without looking that when running on the road.
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I was in a small town too, everyone know sidewalks were for pedestrians and bikes. And we went slow, we stopped, we started, we stopped again, etc. We did not ride like modern cyclists with full set of expensive gear trying to make a speed record on the way to work weaving into and out of traffic. The road was much less safe. Even in the city now, the roads are murderous, viewing is bad, speed limit for cars too high, bike lanes too small (and when they aren't the cyclists still want to be far left on the
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I was in a small town too, everyone know sidewalks were for pedestrians and bikes. And we went slow, we stopped, we started, we stopped again, etc. We did not ride like modern cyclists with full set of expensive gear trying to make a speed record on the way to work weaving into and out of traffic. The road was much less safe. Even in the city now, the roads are murderous, viewing is bad, speed limit for cars too high, bike lanes too small (and when they aren't the cyclists still want to be far left on the white line for some reason).
That's the thing about commuter cyclists, they have someplace to go and don't ride like wobbly kids on their first bike.
There's no reason for speed limits to be too high or bike lanes too narrow, if a city wants biking to be safer, then they can make it safer. The reason why bikes ride out of the bike lane (when it really is a bike lane and not just a shoulder that drivers *think* is a bike lane) is because cars tend to kick debris into the bike lane. A separated bike lane, even with a low curb-like separat
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in dark clothing, after dusk, without proper reflectors or a helmet, naturally
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They started adding dedicated bike lanes around here... between the parked cars and the sidewalks. I'm not sure if they're trying to make biking safer or eliminate bikers through natural selection.
Re: It would be... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Only the intellect of an Anonymous Coward could come up with this. Roads were made for cars and trucks? I suppose that means there were no roads before cars and trucks.
Re:It would be... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It would be... (Score:5, Informative)
Look, roads were made for cars and trucks. If you ride a motorcycle or bicycle on the road, anything that happens to you is your fault. A smart person surrounds himself in steel to protect him from stupid assholes on the road. Only retards think that they don't need it.
Actually, roads were originally made for (and paid by) cyclists:
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
Surrounding yourself in steel doesn't seem to make drivers very safe when 35,000 people a year are killed in car crashes.
It's very safe (Score:2)
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Most non-motorways predate the car, so in fact they were "made" for horses and bikes and foot traffic.
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Most non-motorways predate the car, so in fact they were "made" for horses and bikes and foot traffic.
Modern roads (as you call them, motorways) were in fact made for cars. Here's a hint: if it's paved, and it's got road markings for cars on it, it's designed first and foremost for cars. You don't need as wide a way for cycles, and paths for cycles are usually fairly readily recognizable.
I am generally in favor of adding cycle paths to the world, but in many cases, mixing bicycles and automobiles is insane.
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Most non-motorways predate the car, so in fact they were "made" for horses and bikes and foot traffic.
Modern roads (as you call them, motorways) were in fact made for cars. Here's a hint: if it's paved, and it's got road markings for cars on it, it's designed first and foremost for cars. You don't need as wide a way for cycles, and paths for cycles are usually fairly readily recognizable.
I am generally in favor of adding cycle paths to the world, but in many cases, mixing bicycles and automobiles is insane.
Nope. You're wrong. Most roads pre-date the automobile. They were initially designed without cars in mind. However, most people wish to use their cars on them. Hence car tax was brought about to pave them.
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Nope. You're wrong. Most roads pre-date the automobile. They were initially designed without cars in mind. However, most people wish to use their cars on them. Hence car tax was brought about to pave them.
It's completely irrelevant what they were used for before. I live right next to one of the original stagecoach stops for Lake County, CA. A tiny piece of that route is now the road I live on. Before it was a stagecoach route, most of it was a foot trail used by the locals — the Pomo. But the roadway and course as we know them today were selected for automobiles in the vast majority of cases. They either co-opted routes used for smaller vehicles and widened them, or in other cases outright abandoned po
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Bikes don't belong around cars. Bike lanes should be only built on the sidewalks, bikers don't pay neither taxes nor fees to have lanes given to them by the idiotic governments. I say hit every bike that is on the road, do it on purpose, run them off the roads even in bike lanes unless it is a *toll road* and they *paid* to take it.
I don't know how your roads are paid, but around here, local roads are paid almost entirely out of property and sales taxes, and as a cyclist, I pay a lot of money in those taxes. Plus I pay registration fees for my car that's off the road while I'm cycling.
So it's not at all true that cyclists don't pay for roads -- we don't pay gas taxes, but cyclists cause virtually zero wear and tear on roads, no road ever needs to be repaved because of bike traffic.
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Correlation is not causality (Score:5, Informative)
>"Cycling To Work Can Cut Cancer and Heart Disease"
Nope, that is not the article. Look at the title of the paper:
"Association between active commuting and incident cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mortality: prospective cohort study"
*ASSOCIATION*, which is another way of saying correlation. It is not a study of causality. This proves nothing. Perhaps people who bike to work also eat better. Perhaps they have more income. Perhaps the other parts of their life have lower stress. They can't possibly eliminate ALL other possibilities by "adjusting for" because those are just assumptions.
Of course, it is common sense that exercising regularly will cut your chance of heart disease and possibly cancer. But the title of the posting implies there is causality where that is not proven in the article.
By the way, I bicycle to work almost every day.... but it is only like 2/3 of a mile round trip :)
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It's also possible that the ride itself reduces stress and that has a beneficial effect on the immune system.
My main concern from cycling to work is being able to have a shower when I get there so I don't stink everyone else out. I used to ride to work when it was close enough and now I am close enough again it is something Ive been looking forward to do to improve my fitness after recovering from injury.
The biggest issue I've had with cycling to work is some drivers. They approach from behind and don't r
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>"Cycling To Work Can Cut Cancer and Heart Disease"
Nope, that is not the article. Look at the title of the paper:
"Association between active commuting and incident cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mortality: prospective cohort study"
*ASSOCIATION*, which is another way of saying correlation. It is not a study of causality. This proves nothing. Perhaps people who bike to work also eat better. Perhaps they have more income. Perhaps the other parts of their life have lower stress.
Or more directly, they're healthy enough to bike to work.
I agree that exercise contains huge health benefits, but there's also a huge selection bias at work. Seriously unhealthy people probably can't handle the rigours of cycling to work.
I live in a major metropolitian (Score:2)
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I'm pretty sure the lungfuls of car exhaust will counteract that benefit
Hell, I used to bike to work daily. I had a 1/2 mile stretch that I prayed to god some dumass wouldn't turn me into a red smear on the road. Following that I had a 1/2 mile longass steepass climb I had to do.
// knees gave out on me :(
/// traded my manual transmission for an auto, glad I did so
/ 20 years ago
I forgot about that (Score:2)
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the cars driving like maniacs. Do the drivers in your city drift into the bike lane while making right turns too?
In this state you're supposed to merge into the bike lane before making a right turn. Our drivers drift into the bike lane when they're on the straightaways looking at the scenery, which is a special feature hereabouts.
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I'm pretty sure the lungfuls of car exhaust will counteract that benefit. Hell, I knew a truck driver who had his chest cracked open looking for problems only to find it was just the build up of decades of soot from sitting in traffic so much.
That's not true in most cities:
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
“Even in Delhi, one of the most polluted cities in the world – with pollution levels ten times those in London – people would need to cycle over five hours per week before the pollution risks outweigh the health benefits.
Healthier, but is the increase in trauma worth it? (Score:2)
I have a friend who has no car in a city without much transit - bikes everywhere he needs to go. Despite pushing seventy years of age, he is in top physical condition.
Except that roughly every five years he gets nailed by some clueless driver wandering into the bike lane, pulling out of a mall entrance, or running a light. On each occasion, the medics have had to reassemble him from traces of DNA found at the accident scene. Somehow he survives, and after a few months in the hospital gets back on a bike aga
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That seems highly unlikely. No one suffers repeated catastrophic accidents that require months of hospital care, much less over decades while continuing the same behavior.
Keep making up stories to make yourself feel better about your laziness.
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My exercise is mountain hiking two days a week. Yesterday was a nine-mile day with 2000' of elevation gain.
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That seems highly unlikely. No one suffers repeated catastrophic accidents that require months of hospital care, much less over decades while continuing the same behavior.
I know motorcyclists who fit the description. I knew a guy who is a fucking father who got creamed on CA 9 by a friend who wasn't paying attention, came across the line and hit him head-on. He went right back to riding like a dipshit. He's lucky he didn't leave his son without a dad, the inconsiderate prick. Some people cannot be taught a lesson at any price. Perhaps both of these guys suffered severe brain damage in their first accident.
"We.. are the cyclists." (Monkey Dust) (Score:2)
I'm a cyclist but... (Score:2)
....I work from home....d'oh! Good thing I try to bike lots otherwise. ;)
who are cyclists? (Score:3)
People who cycle to work are people who:
1) Don't need to personally take care of their children in an emergency
2) Live close to work
3) Have flexible working hours and standards
4) Have a nice enough job to support an office and a place to put a bike
In short, cyclists have a lower stress life. I would argue very strongly that cycling to work is the result of a lower stress life, not the cause. It is not a lifestyle that most of us can afford for reasons that have nothing to do with cycling.
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I sometimes bike to work. I don't need (3) flexible working hours. On a bike, there's no trouble getting there at exactly the right time, unlike when I take the car and have to deal with unpredictable traffic. Also, (4) I just put my bike on the car parking lot, against a fence, lamp post, wall, or just in a motorcycle spot. And as far as emergencies regarding my children, it doesn't really matter if I'm an hour away on bike, or an hour by car, or an hour by train.
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Yeah, you clearly have a different way of life than I do, and you obviously have made great choices for you regarding where you live and what you do.
The idea that work is one place, where you're not asked to go to other places during the day, or help shuttle people around, is quite a nice thing. Maybe "flexible working hours" is not the right phrase, but something more like "flexible work requirements." I run my own business, which is great for me, but not for biking. It's not ok for me to put off going
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Note, this is all based on the US, I'm not sure about the societal differences in Denmark.
Living 6 miles from work is still fairly close. As for children, parents often have to personally deal with emergencies. This will usually mean a similar distance to their commute to get to where their child is and once there, they need to be able to transport their child. As for expensive, the GP was saying it was a lifestyle that most of us couldn't do, not that we can't afford it financially.
Weather (Score:2)
It's going to be 90 degrees next week. How am I supposed to bicycle to work without suffering a heat stroke? Then when I do arrive at work dripping with sweat and smelling bad, what am I supposed to do? Around here we have hills with 40 degree slopes. Good luck biking up that half mile.
The real conclusion of the research is.... (Score:2)
They probably just proved a correlation between riding the bike to work and "less heartattacks".
This could very well be caused by the (already) healthy people choosing to ride the bike to work....
Biking To Work == Suicide (Score:2)
While I might have gotten away with the 7 mile bike ride to work in Indianapolis on days without snow and ice, with straight roads on flat land, around here in Virginia I wouldn't have gotten beyond about 2 years on the 15 miles to work where the shortest distance road was the 2nd-most dangerous in the county. With lots of sharp crests and turns, I'd have been hit and knocked into the woods sooner or later. But by using a car, I drove those roads for 15 years and only came close to getting offed a coupl
I bike. Never owned a car ... (Score:2)
... and I'm usually judged 7-12 years younger than I actually am (47). I even feel that way too. Given, I also dance a lot. But I combine my biking with PT, so that evens it out.
I offen get angry seeing avalanches of SUVs and full sized cars with only one Person in them. Germanys cities are clogged to the Brink with Cars and it's a freakin' Pita for everybody. We even start seeing the push for larger Bike Infrastructure at federal Level ... two decades or so too late imho.
Everybody I know who uses the bike
accidents, pollution (Score:2)
First of all, the idea that you can reliably remove other factors from such data is bogus. The population of people who can and want to bike to work is too different from the population who can't or don't want to. There is likely massive self-selection, for example, for locations that have low pollution, for the simple reason that biking in high pollution areas is no fun.
But that's not even the major problem. Biking to work may improve your cardiovascular health and reduce your cancer risk, but it ups your
Re: (Score:2)
Bike to work is healthy and back to home might be dangerous if you get late according to my wife's rules.
What kind of wife do you have that she'd be upset that you're doing something that's healthy?
Bike commuting doesn't have to make a commute significantly longer, my commute is a bit faster by bike because I can take a shortcut through a park that is inaccessible to cars, and I take a bike bridge over the freeway so I avoid the stop-and-go freeway traffic.
The surprising thing about a bike commute is how consistent is -- I get to work within 5 minutes of the same amount of time every day, while when I drive a
Cost of telling her to go screw herself (Score:3)
I understand you think Elkim Roa might be hen-pecked. But if he* tells his wife to go screw herself, and she takes that as a hint to discover vibrating massagers, he might not get any for a while.
* More likely
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There is exactly one death per person.
True, but there are between zero and one deaths during the period of this study per study subject.
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There is exactly one death per person.
So, not counting la petit mort?
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This was the comment I was waiting on. Heart failure and cancer aren't really "let's bike to work god I feel alive just now!"style diseases.
They are god let's stay home and have someone drive us to anywhere we need to go diseases...
My doctor recommended that my father ride a bike for exercise after his heart surgery after his second heart attack. And he did. He was no racer, but managed to ride a few miles around the neighborhood most days. I'm regular cyclist and older than my dad was after his first heart attack, and so far, I'm showing no signs of similar heart disease (though my diet is much better, so I can't attribute it to exercise alone)
So it's not true that heart disease and cycling don't go together.
Re: (Score:2)
Cycle faster, move closer or die younger.