Riding a bike or walking to work found to be associated with better physical health, say Experts
The benefits of incorporating even small amounts of physical activity in one’s lifestyle are believed to have great and significant rewards. A team of experts have stated that active commuters seemed to perform better than those who travelled by public transport or drove. This difference in health fitness levels was gauged by the experts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
These experts also stated that the men who walked or rode a bike seemed to have a lesser rate of obesity, and healthier levels of blood pressure, insulin and triglyceride.
Lead investigator, Penny Gordon-Larsen, PhD, associate professor of nutrition in UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, says, “We don’t know why women don’t reap all the same health benefits as men. We can speculate – women may not be exercising as intensely or it may be that they are commuting shorter distances. But for both sexes, we see significant health benefits to walking or biking to work.”
Apparently, an hour’s brisk walk taken everyday is believed to be adequate for most adults to meet the requirements of the guidelines of physical activity for avoiding weight gain. It has further been stated that biking or walking to work may be one way of increasing one’s physical activity. Although the benefits of exercise have been studied before, not a lot of analysis has been conducted on the health benefits of “non-leisure” activities like active commuting.
These experts were believed to have examined more than 2,300 adults for this purpose. The observations made here were noted to add to the existing evidence that biking or walking to work may be beneficial to an individual.
These findings have been published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
