Cycling Linked to Lower Risk of Dementia, Study of Half a Million Finds

www.sciencealert.com

6 comments

I wonder if that headline works better than "driving linked to an increased risk of dementia" when it comes to motivating someone to include active transportation in their daily life.
You could invert many of the studies the same way.
In other words, are people more motivated to gain health, or the fear of losing health?
Compared with non-active travelers, the cyclists had a 19 percent lower risk of all-cause dementia,
They had multiple study groups, including walkers. Walkers, cyclers, and mixed (walking and inactive) were the "active travelers" groups.
The article did not call out that they found cycling better than walking, only that
association between active travel mode and incident dementia and brain structure
The title and quote from the researchers imply cycling is better than other forms of regular moderate exercise, but provides no supporting statistic for cycling being better. The only statistic quoted was that exercising is better than not exercising.
If the article is going to suggest cycling is better than other activities, they should quote the statistic implying that it is.
- My take was more that cycling is one of a few different ways of getting around that was demonstrably healthier for you compared to non-active methods of transport like driving.
  At the end of the day, they're all good regardless of which one may or may not be "best" (in other words, anything is far better than nothing).
  Also, to be fair, cycling is way faster than walking or running (sometimes it's even faster than driving, especially when you factor in parking+traffic).
  
  I wasn't arguing that cycling wasn't superior for many reasons, only that I didn't like that they didn't quote the specific statistic supporting the claim that cycling was better than walking. I do notice they left out jogging.
  Someone else pointed out that there is a graphic in the article that shows cycling>walking; a graphic you don't see if you view websites in text-only mode. I'd have liked to see the supporting statistic in accessibility-friendly text, and not hidden in a graphic, but it is there.
- Eh? The graphic shown prominently in the linked summary article suggests that cycling is much better than walking. And this seems plausible to me - cycling is not just exercise, it requires quick thinking, balancing, interacting with traffic, judgements regarding risk, speed, efficiency, etc. .
  
  Haha! Yeah, my bad. I read most articles in text mode; I didn't see the graphic until I turned that off.

6 comments