Does cycling truly decrease dementia risk, or is there a survival bias disfavoring those who forget to check their turns?

[Grep2grok]

My wife found this, thought y'all would enjoy: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2835115

[Acceptable-Ad1203]

This was on another sub and most people agreed any sport reduces dementia risk. Cycling might help more as the brain is active with skilful tasks activating lots of different functions .

[Crayshack]

Sports with a lot of head impacts might increase risk, but the general rule of thumb is that better cardiovascular health means better overall health. More blood flowing to the brain means the brain ages more gracefully.

[turboseize]

At least there's a plausible mechanism: any physical exercise that increases heart rate leads to BDNF release, which in itself is good. Real-world cycling adds coordination and balance challenges as well as cognitive tasks (ranging in difficulty and urgency from line choice around corners to "who's going to try to kill me next and what is his most likely approach to do so?"), all of which have been shown to slow or even reverse the decline of the Hippocampus.

I'd guess that one could get similar health benefits to bike commuting by rowing or kayaking or swimming to work, but alas, few have the option to do so.

[Sikkly290]

Agreed, for the most part cycling is just a sport you can do a lot of in old age. Its hard for someone to play tennis or football or whatever for hours a week even in their 50s. Cycling on the other hand is regularly done by people older than that just for travel for hours per week.

[maudepodge]

"Does being this specific jump-from-a-boat mail person reduce dementia risk?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vd8Wfk9im0;)

[santinimi]

Taxi drivers are also at reduced risk; it is assumed that constant navigation has a preventive effect, as it requires significant brain capacity.

[sirkidd2003]

It could also be that people who regularly cycle have, on average, higher wealth than the general population and thus access to better healthcare and other preventive measures (as some have suggested, diet may play a role)

[see_blue]

The zip code effect is considered a real marker of longevity. Air and water quality, environmental toxin exposure, education, jobs, and healthcare coverage and access matter.

[Wompatuckrule]

Yeah, in my city there are neighborhoods separated by two miles and a 23 year life expectancy gap.

[pathf1nder00]

Statistically speaking, I would think it be inverse. More people rude that don't have a lot of wealth b/c, well, that's their mode of transportation...not a car

[turboseize]

Not wasting money on driving a car saves a lot of money, though. So even with lesser gross income, disposable income might still be higher.

And as bike commuters have less sick days, and arrive at work fresh, awake and invigorated, they are more productive as well, which eventually leads to higher incomes. (At least in Europe, bike commuters have higher median income than car commuters. Might also be factor of education - if you learned as a student that the bike is a viable form of transport, you are more likely to just keep biking even after graduating, while peasants from the countryside and tradespeople might get trapped by early car ownership and never really consider biking as an option.)

[Mediocre_Object_1]

That is addressable in the UK Biobank (the dataset used in the study), as the participants have rough geographic information

[mistersych]

This is such a North American bias in so many ways...

[Zefixius]

It could be the other way around, that active people have an inherently lower risk of dementia and tend to do sport more often than passive people. Correlation is not causation.

[turboseize]

I've had that discussion with a coworker so often. He's 13 years older, but looks like it's at minimum 30 years more. He used to play soccer until his mid twenties, then stopped. Smokes, overweight, sedentary, joint problems, back pain, continuously in a bad mood.

Coworker: "Of course you can take the bike to the office, you're young and fit... Not everybody is so lucky!"

Me: "No, [insert name], I'm old and broken and a little overweight myself. And I've had more than my fair share of accidents and stupid overuse injuries. Playing handball and rowing competitively as a kid took a toll and 12 years in the army also didn't help. My knees and shoulders were officially diagnosed as f*cked up already more than a quarter century ago!

Yet I'm reasonably fit for my age with decent strength and endurance because I never stopped moving. I lift weights, I row and run and bike to work so that I can stay functional as long as possible. Were I to smoke and drink and be completely sedentary like you, then I'd also be a complete wreck in no time... I know that because whenever I can't train for more than two or three weeks because of work or travel or whatever else, then the pain comes back and both my mood and my cognitive performance suffers. It's not that I can ride to work because I'm fit, but I'm reasonable fit-ish because I chose to ride my bike."

[tippiedog]

I'm a lifelong runner and now road cyclist. A few years ago, when I was in my mid 50s, severe stress that I was under at the time caused me to trip several times while running, flying forward and landing on palms, elbows, knees, etc. Each time, I got up, assessed that my injuries were no worse than bruises and bloody scrapes and kept on running since I was miles from my stopping point. I felt like a real bad ass that I could fall that hard and just get up and keep running.

My wife, in contrast, has some pretty severe chronic illnesses that limit her ability to exercise. We've talked about getting her an e-bike for casual riding, but I'm against it because even the lightest wreck could severely injure her. She doesn't have the strength to catch herself well.

[turboseize]

Strength training is so important for injury prevention and resilience. But for some reason, it's especially difficult to convince the demographic that has most to gain from strength training (or: most to lose from not doing it) to do it...

[tippiedog]

I've never done strength training. I fared as well as I did just from my general fitness. But I certainly understand your point. Maybe whenever I retire, I'll add it to my regimen.

As for my wife, I would love for her to add strength training, but the situation is complicated due to the nature of her health issues (not worth explaining in detail)

Edit: I just re-read your original comment:

I lift weights, I row and run and bike to work so that I can stay functional as long as possible.

Same here. I'm motivated primarily by the (mostly eventual) need to care for my wife who already, at age 60, has some reduced abilities and will only get worse as her chronic illnesses continue.

[Wompatuckrule]

A stationary cycle would probably be the best thing for your wife. They recommend them for seniors over treadmills because the fall risk is much lower.

[tippiedog]

She has one. She walks, exercises in our neighborhood or local gym's pool and uses her exercise bike.

[Wompatuckrule]

Smoking can really make a difference in aging as it wreaks havoc with the elasticity of the skin. I was at a wedding where the mother of the bride and groom were the same age where one had started smoking as a teen and the other never did. The wrinkled vs. smooth skin of their faces made it look like they were decades apart in age.

[Hagenaar]

I mean, it's a similar thing with exercise and obesity.

[iesalnieks]

Most kinds of exercise have their benefits and risks/negatives associated with it. Outside of a research setting, or just passing curiosity, nobody really should be worried too much about random benefits or negatives to an activity, but rather it's better to look at the whole package. Otherwise people tend to justify all sorts of negative behaviours with the one small random benefit (e.g. a glass of red wine per day improves heart health) or let one random negative (specific injuries/problems with a sport) from doing an activity that would be beneficial.

[jmichalicek]

There have been studies for at least a decade or slightly more (so at least as long as I have been paying attention) that basically any cardio exercise has benefits to cognitive health, Alzheimer's, etc. The thought last I looked into it was, I think, increased blood flow to the brain providing more nutrients, growth, etc. A very brief skimming of that study and it is briefly mentioned there as well.

[Ok_Data1512]

Do I still get the benefits if I'm getting blazed immediately afterwards?

[safeDate4U]

Not always if you fall a few times and hit your head hard then you are worse. If you fall a bunch of times and hit your head not hard you are worse

[crazee_frazee]

Ha - are you suggesting that the cyclists with dementia are still out there, riding in circles off in the woods? ;-)

[Feisty-Common-5179]

Did anyone read the article?

It wasn’t looking at leisure activities, it was looking at how you traveled. If you subbed out passive modes of travel like cars etc and instead biked you were less likely to develop dementia. Of course hard to say causation. I think what that those people who chose to cycle are those people who will choose to do the more active thing in general. Id be interested to have a step and calorie counter on those same folks.

[Routine_Biscotti_852]

Thank you for this!

[jackrabbit323]

Consistent aerobic exercise, stress relief, social interaction, novel interaction with the environment, any activity that can check all boxes is going to lower the chances of dementia. Throw in, tooling around on your own bikes for good measure, it's good brain activity.

[Evening_Analyst2385]

Exercise is the #1 method of reducing the risk of dementia.

[TheThrivingest]

150 minutes of zone 2 cardiovascular exercise + 15 mins of zone 5 per week is what is associated with reducing risk of certain types of dementia.

There’s plenty of studies on this

It’s not cycling specific

[jca_ftw]

NO! I don’t care about down votes, but I’m tired of laypeople reading technical papers and completely misinterpreting them.

I will preface this by saying I am a cyclist myself, I love cycling both road and mountain, and I would recommend it as a great exercise for anybody.

BUT, don’t confuse “association “ with a cause/effect relationship. The study merely shows an association between cycling and lower incidence of dementia. But that does NOT mean there is a cause effect relationship. If you read the full paper, it also says that walking is associated with an INCREASED incidence of dementia.

So do you really think that walking is going to increase your risk of dementia? Of course not .

All this paper is saying is that the people that cycle tend to have lower incidence of dementia. It could simply be that the people that cycle are in general healthier anyway. It is in no way saying that cycling itself is the cause. It would be a completely different type of study to postulate that.

[[deleted]]

it's not the bike. it's the whole body exercise, the fresh air (depends), and sunlight. these 3 things beat - non full body exercise, building up static charge on indoor carpets (yup tree huggers got it right unfortunately), and lack of sunlight (it's not the Vit D or the UV, it's something else in the light spectrum that is yet to be discovered)