Biking: The Actual Fountain of Youth
Posted by Kitty on May 25th 2016
CC image courtesy of Roberto Polendo on Flickr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
The Dutch have found the actual fountain of youth, and you can get there by...biking.
Biking: the actual fountain of youth you say? A study done by the Healthy Living Program last June by the University of Urtrecht in the Netherlands has concluded that biking may increase your life expectancy minute for minute.
The University of Urtrecht takes it upon itself as a social responsibility to raise awareness for sustainability in society through its education and research. Their vested interest in promoting a sustainable society is the drive behind this study. It's an obvious fact that biking improves overall health, but until now, we've never been able to quantify an amount of how much.
According to the Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, the average Dutch citizen travels an astounding 1,000 kilometers per person, per year. That's roughly 621 miles! Per person! Every year!
CC image courtesy of Tilman Haerdle on Flickr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
The study, which used cycling statistics and computational tools from the World Health Organization, surveyed 50,000 Dutch cyclists and their various cycling habits and concluded this: For every 75 minutes per week you spend cycling, life expectancy increases by an hour. This translates roughly to one minute of cycling gives you an extra minute of life expectancy. The takeaway from this is not a net zero gain, considering this commute time would already be used ...well.. commuting. Talk about capitalizing on your commute.
The study estimates cycling prevents around 6,500 deaths every year. So not only is cycling lengthening lives, it's saving them as well.