Riding a Bicycle to School Can Improve Health and Increase Fitness.
Whether information technology's to boost your fitness, wellness or bank residual, or an environmental pick, taking up bicycle riding could exist one of the best decisions y'all e'er make.
Not convinced on the benefits of cycling? Here are 27 reasons to ride a bike, whether y'all want to improve your health, happiness, relationships or all three.
The health benefits of regular cycling
According to experts from Bristol University, the benefits of cycling extend deep into your core.
"Physical activeness helps decrease the time it takes food to move through the big intestine, limiting the amount of water absorbed back into your torso and leaving you with softer stools, which are easier to pass," explains Harley Street gastroenterologist Dr Ana Raimundo.
In add-on, aerobic practise accelerates your breathing and center rate, which helps to stimulate the contraction of abdominal muscles. "Besides as preventing you from feeling bloated, this helps protect you against bowel cancer," Dr Raimundo says.
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Increment your brain power
Need your grey affair to sparkle? And then become pedalling. Researchers from the University of Illinois found that a 5 per cent improvement in cardio-respiratory fitness from cycling led to an comeback of up to xv per cent in mental tests.
That's considering cycling helps build new brain cells in the hippocampus – the region responsible for retention, which deteriorates from the historic period of 30.
"It boosts blood flow and oxygen to the brain, which fires and regenerates receptors, explaining how practise helps ward off Alzheimer'southward," says the study's author, Professor Arthur Kramer.
- Why cycling is good for your mental health
Is cycling salubrious? Yes! Forget apples, riding's the mode to go on the doc at bay. "Moderate exercise makes immune cells more active, and then they're ready to fight off infection," says Cath Collins, principal dietician at St George'south Infirmary in London.
In fact, co-ordinate to research from the University of North Carolina, people who cycle for 30 minutes, five days a week take about half as many sick days as couch potatoes.
Male monarch'southward Higher London compared over ii,400 identical twins and found those who did the equivalent of just three 45-minute rides a week were nine years 'biologically younger' even afterward discounting other influences, such every bit body mass alphabetize (BMI) and smoking.
"Those who do regularly are at significantly lower adventure of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, all types of cancer, high claret pressure and obesity," says Dr Lynn Cherkas, who conducted the inquiry. "The trunk becomes much more efficient at defending itself and regenerating new cells."
Joseph Branston
Twenty bicycles tin can exist parked in the same space as one automobile. Information technology takes around five per cent of the materials and energy used to make a auto to build a bicycle, and a bike produces zero pollution.
Bikes are efficient, besides. You travel around three times equally fast as walking for the aforementioned amount of free energy and, taking into business relationship the 'fuel' you put in your 'engine', yous do the equivalent of 2,924 miles to the gallon.
You have your weight ratio to give thanks: y'all're almost vi times heavier than your bike, but a auto is 20 times heavier than yous.
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Cycling improves your sex activity life
Being more physically active improves your vascular health, which has the knock-on effect of boosting your sex bulldoze, according to health experts in the Us.
1 report from Cornell Academy besides ended that male person athletes accept the sexual prowess of men ii to five years younger, with physically fit females delaying the menopause by a like amount of time.
Meanwhile, research carried out at Harvard University found that men aged over 50 who bike for at least three hours a week take a 30 per cent lower hazard of impotence than those who do little do.
- It'southward official: cycling is good for your sex life
A 'bun in the oven' could benefit from your riding as much equally you. According to enquiry from Michigan Academy in the US, mums-to-be who regularly exercise during pregnancy have an easier, less complicated labour, recover faster and enjoy meliorate overall mood throughout the nine months.
Your pride and joy also has a fifty per cent lower chance of becoming obese and enjoys improve in-utero neurodevelopment.
"At that place'southward no doubt that moderate practice such every bit cycling during pregnancy helps condition the female parent and protect the foetus," says Patrick O'Brien, a spokesperson for the Regal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
- Cycling while pregnant: tips and advice
Studies from Purdue Academy in the US accept shown that regular cycling can cutting your risk of heart disease by l per cent. And according to the British Heart Foundation, around ten,000 fatal heart attacks could exist avoided each year if people kept themselves fitter.
Cycling just 20 miles a week reduces your risk of heart disease to less than one-half that of those who take no exercise, it says.
Etienne Schoeman
No, we don't hateful your Lycra-clad buttocks volition entice your superiors into a passionate office romance, just they'll appreciate what cycling does for your usefulness to the company.
A report of 200 people carried out past the University of Bristol found that employees who exercised before work or at lunchtime improved their time and workload management, and it additional their motivation and their ability to deal with stress.
The study as well reported that workers who exercised felt their interpersonal operation was better, they took fewer breaks and constitute it easier to finish work on time. Sadly, the study didn't find a direct link between cycling and getting a promotion.
- What's the best wheel for commuting?
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Bike away from the big C
In that location'southward plenty of show that whatever exercise is useful in warding off cancer, merely some studies have shown that cycling is specifically adept for keeping your cells in working social club.
One long-term study carried out by Finnish researchers plant that men who exercised at a moderate level for at least thirty minutes a day were half equally probable to develop cancer equally those who didn't.
And what was ane of the moderate forms of practise they cited? Cycling to piece of work. Other studies have establish that women who bike frequently reduce their run a risk of breast cancer by 34 per cent.
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Lose weight by riding your bike
Loads of people who want to shift some heft think that heading out for a jog is the best way to start slimming down. But while running does burn a ton of fat, it'southward not kind to y'all if you're a little larger than you'd like to be.
Think almost it: ii to three times your body weight goes crashing through your body when your pes strikes the footing. If y'all weigh 16 rock that's a lot of strength!
Instead, start out on a bike. Most of your weight is taken past the saddle, so your skeleton doesn't take a battering. Running can wait…
- How to lose weight cycling
If you're cycling to lose weight then you could be in line for a cash windfall… Well, sort of. Researcher Jay Zagorsky, from Ohio Land University, analysed data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth – which saw 7,300 people regularly interviewed between 1985 and 2000 – to run across how their obesity and wealth inverse over that period.
Zagorsky ended that a one unit of measurement increase in body mass index (BMI) score corresponded to an £800 or 8 per cent reduction in wealth. And so, shed a few BMI points on the bike and starting time earning. (Results may vary.)
- The best cheap road bikes: bargain bikes for less than £600
Daniel Banham
Y'all'd recollect a urban center cyclist would suck up much more than pollution than the drivers and passengers in the vehicles chucking out the baneful gases. Not and so, co-ordinate to a written report carried out by Imperial College London.
Researchers plant that passengers in buses, taxis and cars inhaled substantially more pollution than cyclists and pedestrians.
On boilerplate, taxi passengers were exposed to more than 100,000 ultrafine particles – which can settle in the lungs and damage cells – per cubic centimetre. Bus passengers sucked up merely under 100,000 and people in cars inhaled about forty,000.
Cyclists, meanwhile, were exposed to merely 8,000 ultrafine particles per cubic centimetre. It's thought that cyclists exhale in fewer fumes because we ride at the edge of the road and, unlike drivers, aren't directly in the line of exhaust fume.
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Bike riding means guilt-complimentary snacks
Upping your common salt intake is seldom your doctor'south advice, but in the few days leading up to a big ride or sportive that's exactly what you lot should practise. This gives you lot the perfect excuse to munch on crisps and other salty foods you might normally avert.
The sodium in them helps protect your body against hyponatraemia, a condition caused by drinking also much water without plenty sodium that can lead to disorientation, affliction and worse.
- The best recipes and diet tips for cyclists
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Savor healthy family fourth dimension
Cycling is an activity the whole family can do together. The smallest tyke can clamber into a wheel seat or tow-along buggy, and because it's kind on your joints, there's zero to stop grandparents joining in as well.
Moreover, your riding addiction could be sowing the seeds for the next Bradley Wiggins or Marianne Vos. Studies take found that, unsurprisingly, kids are influenced by their parents' exercise choices.
Put but, if your kids see yous riding regularly, they think it'southward normal and volition desire to follow your example. Don't be surprised, though, if they become embarrassed by your tendency to mismatch fluorescent Lycra when they become teenagers.
Tom Marvin / Immediate Media
- Beginner's guide to cycling with kids
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Go better at any sport
Whether you want to go on in prime shape or merely meliorate your weekly tennis game, a stint in the saddle is the way to begin.
A contempo medical study from Norway carried the championship Aerobic Endurance Training Improves Soccer Performance, which makes it pretty clear that the knock-on benefits to other sports and activities are immense.
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Make creative breakthroughs
Writers, musicians, artists, height executives and all kinds of other professionals apply exercise to solve mental blocks and brand decisions – including Jeremy Paxman, Sir Alan Sugar and Spandau Ballet.
A study establish that just 25 minutes of aerobic exercise boosts at least ane measure of creative thinking. Credit goes to the flow of oxygen to your grey affair when information technology matters about, sparking your neurons and giving you animate space away from the muddle and pressures of 'real life'.
Many cyclists plow their health, fitness and determination into fundraising efforts for the less fortunate. The London to Brighton bike ride has raised over £twoscore million for the British Heart Foundation since the two became involved in 1980, with endless other rides contributing to the coffers of worthy causes.
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You tin become fit without trying besides difficult
Regular, everyday cycling has huge benefits that tin justify you lot binning your wallet-crippling gym membership.
According to the National Forum for Coronary Heart Disease Foundation in the Us, regular cyclists enjoy a fitness level equal to that of a person who's 10 years younger.
No prizes for guessing that the lungs piece of work considerably harder than usual when you ride. Generally, an adult cycling uses 10 times the oxygen they'd need to sit in front of the TV for the same period.
Even better, regular cycling will help strengthen your cardiovascular arrangement over fourth dimension, enabling your eye and lungs to work more efficiently and getting more than oxygen where information technology's needed quicker. This ways you can do more exercise for less endeavor. How good does that sound?
Sports physiologists accept found that the torso'south metabolic charge per unit – the efficiency with which information technology burns calories and fatty – is not only raised during a ride, but for several hours afterwards.
"Even later on cycling for 30 minutes, you could exist burning a higher amount of total calories for a few hours later you stop," says sports physiologist Mark Simpson of Loughborough University.
And as yous become fitter, the benefits are more profound. One recent report showed that cyclists who incorporated fast intervals into their ride burned three-and-a-half times more torso fat than those who cycled constantly but at a slower pace.
- How to lose belly fatty by cycling
Mick Kirkman / Immediate Media
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Yous're developing a positive habit
Supersede a harmful dependency – such as cigarettes, alcohol or eating too much chocolate – with a positive i, says William Glasser, author of Positive Addiction.
The result? You're a happier, healthier person getting the kind of fix that boosts the good things in life.
Once a thing of myth, the infamous 'runner'south high' has been proven beyond uncertainty by High german scientists. Notwithstanding, despite the proper noun, this high is applicable to all endurance athletes.
University of Bonn neurologists visualised endorphins in the brains of 10 volunteers before and after a two-60 minutes cardio session using a technique called positive emission tomography (PET).
Comparison the pre- and mail service-run scans, they found testify of more opiate binding of the happy hormone in the frontal and limbic regions of the brain – areas known to be involved in emotional processing and dealing with stress.
"At that place'due south a direct link between feelings of wellbeing and exercise, and for the first time this study proves the physiological mechanism behind that," explains written report co-ordinator Professor Henning Boecker.
- Why cycling makes you happy
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Make friends and stay healthy
The social side of riding could be doing you every bit much good as the bodily practise and health benefits. University of California researchers found socialising releases the hormone oxytocin, which buffers the 'fight or flight' response.
Some other nine-year written report from Harvard Medical School establish those with the most friends cut the risk of an early on death past more than 60 per cent, reducing blood force per unit area and strengthening their immune arrangement.
The results were so significant that the researchers concluded not having close friends or confidants is as detrimental to your wellness as smoking or conveying extra weight. Add in the fitness element of cycling too and you're onto a winner.
Even if you're miserable when you saddle up, cranking through the miles will lift your spirits.
"Whatsoever mild-to-moderate practice releases natural feel-practiced endorphins that assistance counter stress and make you happy," explains Andrew McCulloch, principal executive of the Mental Health Foundation.
That's probably why four times more than GPs prescribe exercise therapy equally their most common treatment for depression compared to three years ago.
"But three thirty-minute sessions a week can be plenty to give people the lift they need," says McCulloch.
Jonathon Nackstrand
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Feeling tired? Become for a ride
Sounds counter-intuitive but if you feel too tired for a ride, the all-time thing you tin can do is go for ride.
Physical activity for fifty-fifty a few minutes is a surprisingly constructive wake-up call. A review of 12 studies on the link between exercise and fatigue carried out between 1945 and 2005 found that exercise straight lowers fatigue levels.
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Spend quality time with your partner
It doesn't matter if your paces aren't perfectly matched, just slow down and enjoy each other's company. Many couples make one or two riding 'dates' every week.
And it makes sense: practice helps release feel-good hormones, so later on a ride you'll have a warm feeling towards each other even if he leaves the toilet seat upwardly and her hair is blocking the plughole once again.
So, you want a bike now, right?
We've got y'all covered. Bank check out our buyer'south guide to what kind of bike yous should buy, or, if y'all already have an thought of what yous want, head over to our best products hub.
Source: https://www.bikeradar.com/advice/fitness-and-training/30-great-benefits-of-cycling/
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