Cycling doesn't help us live longer apparently!

I can sort of agree. Currently easing out of the worst concussion I've ever had, so there's some legitimacy to his point. {Insert laughing emoji here}

Yep, most of my near-death experiences have been on a bike...

Hmm, might live a more active old age but three weeks on crutches in severe pain after an off on ice may say otherwise.

Quality not quantity (although obviously a sensible balance of the latter).

I don't do riding a bike or sailing for the purpose of living longer I do these things to enjoy / distract from the knowledge of the finite amount of time I have in existence and (for me) anything requiring a court or pitch does not quite achieve the same state of removal from reality and to try and forget the relentless march of middle age.

Mid life crisis anyone?

The so-called ‘news’ story in the first post is complete and utter bollocks! I am very familiar with the original paper (Oja et al BJSM 2016) that it bizarrely claims to be based on, and the very first line of the results in the abstract directly contradicts the claims in the GetSurrey piece:

Significant reductions in all-cause were observed for participation in cycling (HR=0.85, 95% CI 0.76 to 0.95),

The authors are all extremely eminent, internationally renowned experts in physical activity: Daniel Amen is not…

I’ve been working on this kind stuff for over 25 years - over half the authors of that paper are colleagues and good friends of mine - and I can assure you that cycling is an extremely healthy activity, even after taking account of any elevated risk of injury and self-selection by cyclists.

march of middle age

That comes after Fat February right?

apparently we should be playing racket sports

Well squash has a brilliant reputation for giving people heart attacks!

Dr Amen, one of the most influential specialists in the field of brain health, said regarding swimmers and racket sport enthusiasts: “They live longer than everyone else because what coordination does is that it activates your cerebellum, 10% of the brain volume in the back, and it is half of the neurons in the brain. If you activate that, you turn on the rest of your brain.”

My conclusion from that is that I've been right all along about roadies being boring farts. "Cycling" is a broad church! I think most 'proper' mountain biking involves as much spatial coordination than racquet sports.

One of the study's hypotheses was that racket sports encourage greater adherence to physical exercise, which has a positive impact on the health and mood of people who practice them

So the study didn't account for frequency of exercise? Well that's useful.

Quality not quantity (although obviously a sensible balance of the latter).

quite - any study that sets longevity as it’s desirable metric is clearly not aligned to my desires - I’d rather live to 80 and have a fun and enjoyable life than life to 94 but spend the last 10 years in a care home confused about who I am and virtually never going outside.

confused about who I am and virtually never going outside.

A Zwifter!

Lorax has it.  That article is nonsense

I immediately thought BS even before expert comment from Lorax. It would have contradicted everything we know about the benefits of regular exercise.

Thanks @tjagain and @irc - it really is utter BS.

Mind you, I didn’t exactly do well in my previous post, in which my late night thumbs on a phone screen managed to omit the crucial word ‘mortality’ from the quote I provided!

Significant reductions in all-cause mortality were observed for participation in cycling

If you want evidence on the huge benefits of cycling (and walking) take a look at the WHO Europe Health Economic Assessment Tool (HEAT) for walking and cycling, and check out some of the reports on that page which provide the evidence underpinning it - especially the ‘Methods and user guide.’ You will see most of the authors of the Oja et al paper listed in it, along with me 🙂

I think most ‘proper’ mountain biking involves as much spatial coordination than racquet sports.

That's why I pop a superman out atleast twice each way on my daily commutes 😉

General cycling is good for cardio, builds some muscles in the legs, but it's pretty useless for much else.

Racket sports, aerobic and pool swimming just make you feel you have lived longer.

General cycling is good for cardio, builds some muscles in the legs, but it’s pretty useless for much else

Apart from significantly reducing one’s risk of all cause mortality!

I play a lot of tennis and ride MTB (only April to October though) and I would agree that tennis is better for fitness as it engages core muscle far more, particularly if you play "modern" tennis with an aggressive grip.

But tennis is also better in terms of engaging the brain, you think constantly, it's almost like a game of chess at competitive level.

On the other hand, MTB is a better escape and probably as good a stress reliever.

I don't know about road riding as I don't understand road riding.

That’s why I pop a superman out atleast twice each way on my daily commutes

Surely Audi dodging contributes hugely to spatial awareness - more than the odd superman.

I was rather hoping it was rubbish but I'm not erudite enough to know. I did Google the chap and came up with a long list of 'change you life' type books so thought it might be a bit off.

Anyway, I shall keep cycling and hope it helps my dodgy heart.

Having said all that, it's not the sort of mis-information we want out there when the cycling industry is already on its knees.

Cycling particularly commuting is also a huge destressor.  Burns off all the flight or fight hormones.   The biggest thing most folk could do for their health is cycle to work.

Apart from significantly reducing one’s risk of all cause mortality

Sorry I was diverting from the topic. I was thinking more in terms of physical ability to do things in a range of scenarios, to move and react. With cycling how your body moves is constrained by the bicycle. Then there's other issued such as the difficulty of a long term cyclist suddenly taking up running.

Spot-on @tjagain - recently confirmed with a large, high quality study from Scotland:

This study, based on a large representative sample followed up for 18 years, provides robust evidence of lower risk of all-cause mortality, any hospital admission, cardiovascular disease hospitalisation and medication, cancer incidence and mortality and medication for poor mental health among cycling commuters compared with non-active commuters.

https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e001295

@PJay - the original piece you linked to really is utter drivel. It is bad journalism that directly contradicts the findings from the well-conducted scientific research it purports to be based on (Oja et al 2016), with quotes from someone who has no apparent expertise in physical activity. The scientific paper robustly demonstrated a clear reduction in all cause mortality among cyclists - the opposite of the spurious claim in the piece you linked to.

The author list for the Oja et al 2016 paper is like a Who's Who of global experts on cycling and health. I strongly recommend listening to them, not an 'American celebrity doctor'.

I was thinking more in terms of physical ability to do things in a range of scenarios

Thanks @sirromj - I take your point - but also agree with @igm about the potential cognitive benefits 🙂

The fact that this ground breaking research was being headlined in a local news website made my clickbait sensors take over, but lorax and others have done the background checking so I didn't need to.

Tom Lehrer said it in jest, but we really do have doctors who specialize in diseases of the rich.

Why no reduction in mortality in CVD though?

"Significant reductions in all-cause mortality were observed for participation in cycling , swimming, racquet sports ) and aerobics . No significant associations were found for participation in football and running.

A significant reduction in CVD mortality was observed for participation in swimming , racquet sports  and aerobics, but there were no significant associations for cycling, running and football.

Variable dose–response patterns between the exposure and the outcomes were found across the sport disciplines."

Thanks. Yes I did pick up on a number of red flags (not least that it wasn't showing up anywhere else more reputable that a local news source) but the apparent involvement of Edinburgh & Glasgow universities made me wonder. Have I misunderstood this & they were involved in the original study that our celebrity doctor is misusing.

I'd assumed that Amen's study was the comprehensive 10 year one so I must pay more attention in future!

I've just done a wider search of cycling & longevity and there's stacks of good stuff out there.

@HoratioHufnagel - we know from other research that regular cycling does lead to a reduction in CVD mortality. The authors couldn’t robustly identify that in this study because of small numbers in the subgroup analyses, especially after adjusting for multiple confounders, resulting in a lack of statistical power. Unlike the person quoted in the news piece they have maintained appropriate scientific caution, and only said what they can legitimately state…

As they say: in the Discussion section:

…the small number of events impaired the statistical power in some analyses. There were relatively few deaths due to all causes among runners and football players, which may explain the wide CIs in the final adjusted model. The number of CVD deaths was rather small among all sport/exercise participants and may reflect the weaker associations especially in the maximally adjusted model results. Nevertheless, the associations remained robust for swimming, racquet sports and aerobics.

Not any of the information so this is just off the cuff but....

There is a very large correlation between socio economic class and life expectancy. Racket sports (and I guess I'm mainly thinking tennis and squash) are predominately played by people of higher socio-economic classes. Not too many brickies or taxi drivers join the local tennis club.

So, is playing racket sports a way of conditioning yourself to life longer, or are the racket sports playing fraternity a self-selecting group of people that live longer for a bunch of non-hitting a ball with a stick related reasons?

Cycling...and I'm thinking road cycling more really.....has changed markedly in the last generation. When I first joined a cycle club it was really quite a working class sport - or at the very least class ambivalent.  With its move towards a golf alternative, that's really changed. And with that, maybe the life expectancy of a cyclist might have gone up too.

Having said all that, it’s not the sort of mis-information we want out there when the cycling industry is already on its knees.

Do you really think a significant number of people choose to cycle to live longer? or might give up because they need to the time to do another sport that will make them live longer?  I do wonder who it hurts that he "cycling industry is on its knees".  Lets face it "the cycling industry" has been marketing BS nonsense to us we don't need for decades.  Tough market conditions might just mean that the products actually need to be better to justify extra cost.

Apart from significantly reducing one’s risk of all cause mortality!

Were I being pedantic, I’d point out that none of these studies show (or even can show) that activity x reduces bad thing y. Only that activity x is associated with y.

It’s all observational data and as convert points out, there are likely to be plenty of confounders (although whilst I confess I haven’t read either article, I’d be staggered if the authors didn’t attempt to correct for socioeconomic status).

I know you know that, just pointing out to other readers that one can never be completely sure about exercise and death rates. There are plenty of other reasons to do exercise, mind.

@superficial Yes, of course, it is not possible to prove a causal relation by randomising people to different behaviours over the lifecourse, but the evidence on the health benefits of physical activity is so consistent and so overwhelming - far, far beyond this single study - that it is entirely reasonable to conclude that regular activity carries a mortality benefit.

Their multivariate model adjusted for age, sex, long-standing illness, alcohol drinking frequency, psychological distress, BMI, smoking status, education level, doctor-diagnosed cardiovascular disease or cancer, and weekly volume of other physical activity. Following on from @convert's point the racquet sports findings may well have been influenced by some residual confounding - there's only so much one can do with the raw data before the numbers in each subgroup get too small to be able to yield significant findings.

The cycling assessed in the paper was for any purpose, not just sports cycling. I don't know how much of that will have been utility cycling, but I imagine it will have been a reasonable proportion. I agree with you @poly that vanishingly few people are likely to change their behaviour on the basis of this kind of reporting, but the behaviour that matters here is that of the people who shape the environments that determine behaviour (eg through bike lanes, lower speed limits, etc) - and local politics is influenced by what appears in local media.

It seems to me, though, that the fundamental point here is that the scientific paper behind the click-bait piece from the start of the thread reinforces the extensive evidence base that cycling is a healthy behaviour, and the click-bait needs to be ignored!

In 2012, The Washington Post Magazine ran a cover story titled "Daniel Amen is the most popular psychiatrist in America. To most researchers and scientists, that's a very bad thing." The Washington Post detailed Amen's lack of acceptance among the scientific community and his monetary conflict of interest.[1] Journalist Sanjiv Bhattacharya wrote that Amen's critics likened him "to a self-help guru rather than a scientist, on account of all the books, DVDs and nutritional supplements which he hawks so shamelessly on infomercials" and that Amen was "the most controversial psychiatrist in America [who] may also be the most commercially successful."[25] Amen has responded to such criticism by claiming that the criticism comes from jealousy of his financial success and also claiming that his largest source of referrals is from previous patients.[25]

 

In 2008, Tufts professor and writer Daniel Carlat published an article on Amen's use of SPECT imaging.[48] After visiting Amen's clinics, Carlat called Amen's interpretations of the scans "spectacularly meaningless".[1]

Lots more in a similar vein on his wiki page...

@kcr

 claiming that his largest source of referrals is from previous patients.

Interestingly, whenever it's been looked at, and it's not enough, there is absolutely no correlation between patient satisfaction and beneficial outcome.

Whenever I see another study into exercise I am reminded of how brilliant the London Bus Drivers study published in 1958 was. It compared cardiac health rates  between bus drivers and bus conductors.  One group on their feet walking around at work the other group sitting on their arse.

The beauty of this study being that both groups were from the same socio economic group, working in the same places, probably with similar diets and smoking and drinking rates etc. The one big difference being exercise during the working day

https://cardiac-rehab.co.uk/the-london-busmen-study/

Daniel Amen even has an entry on RationalWiki. That probably means he's more than just your common or garden quack: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Daniel_Amen

Thanks @sirromj – I take your point – but also agree with @igm about the potential cognitive benefits ?

I've been bicycle commuting this week, as usual, and yes, do agree with you and TJ, it's good for the mind, destressing - providing of course the route is low traffic. And every once in a while it's very good to take a fun bike rather than utilitarian. I do actually think I'd  struggle to go back to driving daily.

I’ve been working on this kind stuff for over 25 years

@lorax, can I ask if do you know much about CTEPH or Pulmonary Hypertension in general, and/or the research showing RV changes in endurance athletes? If so I'm looking for some advice if that's ok.

@jameso Sorry, no - I was a doctor a *very* long time ago, but then moved into public health policy and research and have only worked at a structural, population level since the early 2000s. I can bore for Britain on non-communicable disease prevention, but I'm definitely not the person to ask for clinical advice!

It sounds like you need to see a cardiologist or a sports and exercise medicine specialist.

^ thanks. Sounds like an interesting line of work to me. Yes, a cardiologist perhaps, been fwded to a CTEPH specialist but there's a wait and and in the meantime just trying to make sense of the info available.

But i think it is correct that racket sports correlate with greater life expectancy than cycling. Even when allowing for other factors. The speculation being that it’s not possible to be a solitary tennis player.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30193744/

I seem to get a Facebook post most weeks telling me that its vo2max is the big thing for a long life. I’d  quite like to know if that’s been tested on a population level. Presumably tennis isn’t better at improving VO2 max than running

That sounds even better @jameso. Sorry about the wait - hope you get seen soon and all goes well.

And yes, it is interesting - I’m very lucky.

But i think it is correct that racket sports correlate with greater life expectancy than cycling. Even when allowing for other factors.

I'm thinking that ownership of granite kitchen work surfaces and Mercedes Benz valued at over £100k also correlate to greater life expectancy than cycling so maybe I'll sack off the cycling and save up for a new kitchen and car. (That's the way this all works, isn't it?)  😀

From the pubmed link:

Various sports are associated with markedly different improvements in life expectancy. Because this is an observational study, it remains uncertain whether this relationship is causal. Interestingly, the leisure-time sports that inherently involve more social interaction were associated with the best longevity-a finding that warrants further investigation.

That means that my MTB group, who spend more time talking than cycling, should be right up there with the wrinkly tennis players.

’m thinking that ownership of granite kitchen work surfaces and Mercedes Benz valued at over £100k also correlate to greater life expectancy than cycling so maybe I’ll sack off the cycling and save up for a new kitchen and car. (That’s the way this all works, isn’t it?)

I think that is a factor they will have show allowed for

I note that i could save a fortune by swapping to tennis. I’m a 15 minute walk from some free tennis courts

That means that my MTB group, who spend more time talking than cycling, should be right up there with the wrinkly tennis players

Excellent point and a hypothesis that would be worth testing.

^ thanks @lorax.

FWIW to add something to the thread, there is some research showing that endurance activity ('ultra-distance' bike stuff etc) can result in adaptation of the heart structure similar to changes that occur in hypertension or some of the symtoms of atrial fibrilation. I'm not qualified to read into the results though - just took it from the summaries that perhaps not all exercise is good, it may cross over into strain in the long term and wear & tear if you have an elevated HR for many hours a day repeatedly, over time.