“Walking by bike next to you”, sings Riccardo Cocciante. Romanticism aside, commuters who go to work by bike for the journey home-office (or university) have a 47 percent lower risk of death, a 24 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease (which in Italy causes 47 thousand deaths per year), a 10 percent lower risk of hospitalization for any reason. These are the (undeniable) health advantages that emerge from the study conducted by Bruce Whyte of the Glasgow Centre for Population Health and published in the scientific journal Bmj Public Health.
The results obtained strengthen those of another research, conducted in 2017 again in Scotland (and always visible on Bmj). In this case, researchers at the University of Glasgow have detected the benefits of moving by bike or on foot (among the benefits, walking lowers blood pressure) after having cross-referenced the answers to a test relating to the means of transport used to reach the office with data on illnesses, hospital admissions and mortality of 264,377 English people with an average age of 53. Here too it emerges that cyclists obtain the greatest benefits: getting on the saddle every day reduces the risk of cancer by 45 percent and cardiovascular disease by 46 percent (going on foot, however, reduces the possibility of developing a cardiovascular disease by 27 percent and of dying from it by 36 percent).
Pedaling the elixir of long life
Whyte’s study used nationally representative data from the Scottish Longitudinal Study Development and Support Unit, focusing on people aged 16 to 74. The final analysis was based on 82,297 individuals, who were asked about their mode of transport. “Active travel” was defined as cycling or walking; all other commuting methods were labelled “inactive”. Respondents’ responses were then linked to national all-cause hospital admissions – including cardiovascular disease, cancer and road accidents – as well as prescriptions for drugs (anxiolytics, sedatives, antidepressants) for mental health problems from 2001 to 2018.
The results obtained indicate that “active travel” is associated with numerous health benefits. For cyclists, in particular, there was a 47 percent reduction in the risk of death from any cause (almost halving the risk compared to inactive commuters). For them, then, the risk of hospitalization for any cause does not exceed 10 percent, while the risk of being hospitalized for cardiovascular disease decreases by 24 percent. There is more. Two-wheel enthusiasts also have a 30 percent lower risk of receiving prescriptions for cardiovascular diseases, a 51 percent lower risk of dying from cancer, a 24 percent reduction in hospitalization. Last but not least, for cyclists the risk of being administered drugs for mental disorders decreases by 20 percent.
Walking every day improves your health
As for walking to work (or university), the study conducted at the Glasgow Centre for Population Health is clear: those who can do so are 11 percent less likely to be hospitalized for any reason and 10 percent less likely to be hospitalized for cardiovascular disease. Not to mention that walking is associated with a 10 percent and 7 percent reduction in the risk of receiving prescriptions for cardiovascular disease and mental disorders, respectively.
Walking, therefore, prolongs life. And it is not necessary to walk too much. In support of this theory come the results of the largest observational study ever conducted on the effects of walking on health, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology by a team of experts from the Medical University of Lodz (Poland), the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the United States as well as other research institutes.
With numbers in hand, the scientists – who have put together the results of 17 different previous works conducted on the topic, relating to 226,889 people and analyzed in their entirety – have shown that it is sufficient to take about 4 thousand steps a day to obtain a significant reduction in the risk of death from any cause; already at 2 thousand steps, then, a reduction in the risk of death from cardiovascular diseases is observed. “Our study confirms that the more you walk, the better. And this concerns women and men, regardless of age and whether the person lives in a temperate, subtropical or subpolar region”, the words of Maciej Banach, professor of cardiology and coordinator of the group of authors of the work.