Health benefits of cycling
Shifter‘s The staggering health improvements from bike commuting talks about benefits of cycling for physical, mental, and social health at high level.
Shifter‘s The staggering health improvements from bike commuting talks about benefits of cycling for physical, mental, and social health at high level.
Celis Morales2017association showed, with a prospective cohort study, a strong protective association of cycling commuting for all-cause, CVD, and cancer incidence/mortality. For all-cause mortality, the Hazard ratio is 0.59 (0.42 to 0.83).
Cycling’s Recommended Minimum Daily Allowance. Do you ride your bike enough to maintain good health? points out that cycling doesn’t take any time away because every minute of cycling is a minute of beneficial exercise.
As reported in Like to bike? Your knees will thank you and you may live longer, too, cycling is very good for the knees.
Risk vs. benefits
There is no denying that riding a bike can be more dangerous than driving as there’s no hunk of metal that surround the bike nor various safety systems like airbags.
The way I view the risk of cycling is to think about independent trials (risk) and accumulative health benefits. Whenever I choose to ride a bike, I accept a minuscule risk (~1 in 10 million). If I don’t become more reckless over time, this risk will stay more or less the same or even decrease as I get better with cycling and learn. By accepting this risk, I gain the health benefits from active commuting that stay in my body and accumulate over time. The next day, I accept the same risk, but with a slightly better health (relative to the counterfactual).