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Cycling To Work Can Cut Cancer and Heart Disease (bbc.com)
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.
>"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 :)
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.
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...
Surrounding yourself in steel doesn't seem to make drivers very safe when 35,000 people a year are killed in car crashes.