Author Archives: jm

Cycling is time-effective

Cycling saves time is one of the advantages of using your bike to go to work, study or buy. Pieces of news and research television documentaries have demonstrated it. If you have not noticed it, think about it or just do the following to check it:

– Determine your start and end points

– Make the comparison between these three alternatives:

Get in the car, sit in traffic, queue to get into the car park, pay to park, park your car, and arrive to the end point
Walk to the bus stop, wait for it, get on bus (pay), watch the roads throughout the window, leave the bus, walk to the end point
Get on your bike, filter past traffic, lock your bike, walk to the end point

I promise you if you do the three experiences, you will discover that using your bike is the fastest ,specially in cities, as well as cheaper. Moreover, you will fight against climate change and practice sport. Furthermore, cycling contributes to reduce obesity and protects your body and your mind.

Cycling body health benefits (3/3)

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Continuing with the series about health impacts and cycling, this time I am going to show additional body benefits different from the ones exposed here and here.

When comparing cycling with some other sports, is considered low impact. A lot of research has been carried out in the last years comparing perhaps the two most practiced sports: cycling vs running. The fact of running being weight bearing makes injury rates to be higher in comparison to cycling (which is not weight bearing). This point was demonstrated even with long distance runners and cyclists. When researchers compared both groups, they discovered runners suffered 133-144 per cent more muscle damage, 256 per cent more inflammation, and 87 per cent higher DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) compared to the cyclists group. Overall, riding a bike is specially indicated for those who have osteoarthritis since it is a low-impact exercise that places little stress on joints.

Moreover, cycling allows reaching further places compared to other sports in the same time. As a result, it improves your navigation skills no matter where you practice it. You need to remember a route or determine where is the North when riding. Orientation and addresses should be in your memory or you would need to earn your daily bread with your own resources, no matter whether you are cycling in a city, mountain or countryside.

Furthermore, cycling improves your sexual life. Yes, you have read it right. Why is so? Doctors said the muscles developed on the bike are used during intercourse. The better developed these muscles, the longer and more athletic intercourse will be. And it works for women and men.

Next, it is not rocket science that tiring yourself out on a bike will improve your sleep. Researchers determined sleep problems to those people who drop between 2-4 per cent in cardiorespiratory exercise practice, no matter the people gender. Looking for the causes, they suggested it could be a reduction in anxiety brought by exercise than improves the ability to sleep. Bike exercise also protects against weight gain with age, which is another cause of sleep dysfunction.

Finally, riding a bike also increases handling and spacial awareness. Climbing, descending and cornering, among others technical elements, teach you how to use your body weight to get the bike to go where you want it to. Gaining the skills to manage these technical elements can provide an increase in your muscles and a massive confidence boost, specially when you start to see improvements. Posture and coordination are also improved. And it only takes two to four hours a week to achieve a general improvement to your health.

How to carry the shopping

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The sum bicycle plus shopping is seen as something difficult or even incompatible by non-bikers sometimes. But when it comes to use your brain to solve this apparently important problem, it all has sense.

First of all, freedom is increased in comparison to using a car. You can park your bike easily and it occupies less space. Secondly, you exercise your body.

Moreover, you need a rear rack, saddlebags or just a backpack. Regarding saddlebags, the best way to organize them is putting the heavier and less fragile objects at the bottom, i.e. tins and boxes. Next, put the most breakable items on top such as eggs and bread. Remember to distribute weights uniformly in your saddlebags in order to avoid your bike bending.

Thirdly, you can use a bicycle trailer or a cargo bike to carry extra shopping weight in addition to people. Finally, never ever forget locking your bicycle by at least two points while going shops.

covid-19

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Back in 2020, humanity faced a disaster officially known as covid-19. Hundred of thousands got ill and thousands died. The negative impacts of such a pandemic are well-know, but on the other hand, there were few positive points.

Regarding the essence of this blog, the most important one was the compulsory, drastic reduction in the use of vehicles powered by a combustion engine in most countries. This was so in order to diminish contacts between people and avoid infections. At the same time, this action leaded to an unprecedented pollution reduction. It was so impressive that only climate scientists and other specialized workers in the field had previously noticed the remarkable improvement in quality air. News and scientific analyses confirmed their believes. For example, data in Valencia, Spain, showed a more than 50% drop in nitrogen dioxide, as well as an extraordinary fall in CO2 production. Similar results were measured in central European countries, Italy or China. Noise was also reduced and contributed to improve quality lives. Thus, the moral of these adopted measures to war against the virus was the less vehicles powered by a combustion engine running, the better for human health and environment.

This is a lesson for skeptical people and specially those politicians who still hinder fights against climate change. Pollution and noise negatively impact human health and using your bike is an excellent method to become part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Cycling body health benefits (2/3)

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Continuing with this series of posts, in the first one I talked about health benefits of cycling: weight control, muscle development and immune system reinforcement. Now, I am going to highlight the benefits of riding regarding diseases.

Researchers have demonstrated blood pumping your body and calories burned when riding helps you cut your risk of developing major illnesses such as heart disease and several kinds of cancer. For instance, cycling to work was showed an impact of cutting half the risk of suffering heart attacks or cancer in 260,000 individuals over the course of five years.

Second, cardiovascular disease is a term than includes stroke, high blood pressure and heart attack. By practicing regular cycling, one stimulates and improves her heart, lungs and circulation. Conversely, she reduces her risk of cardiovascular disease. This is related to the fact that riding strengthens your heart muscles, lowers resting pulse and reduces blood fat levels. The comparisons are odious, but research demonstrated that people who cycle to work have two to three times less exposure to pollution than car drivers, and their lung function is improved.

Third, type 2 diabetes is related to lack of psychical activity as a clear indicator of developing such a disease. Large-scales researches have shown than riding for more than 30 minutes per day had a 40 per cent lower risk of developing this type of diabetes.

Related to a previous point, bicyclers are exposed to fewer pollution than car drivers. Indeed, researchers measured air pollution through detectors fitted to a driver, a bus user, a pedestrian and a cyclist. These people moved through a busy route in central London. The results showed the car driver experienced five times higher pollution levels than the cyclist and three and a half more pollution measures than the bus user. As a result, lung health improves when riding instead of driving a car.

Cycling body health benefits (1/3)

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Cycling is related to psychology and produces a series of mental benefits as I wrote about it here, here and here. On the other hand, it also provokes a lot of body health benefits. The first post of this series deals with the weight control, muscle development and immune system reinforcement.

The basic equation when intending to loss weight is calories out must exceed calories in. In other words, you need to burn more calories than you consume. Researchers have determined that cycling burns between 400 and 1,000 calories per hour, depending on intensity and bicycler weight. Other research shows that riding for just thirty minutes every day will burn nearly five kilograms of fat over a year. Furthermore, you decide the time and intensity of cycling, thus you can adapt them to your needs.

Additional implications are the joy this activity produces when practiced and how much time you spend burning calories on a bike. Moreover, riding increases your metabolic rate which is closely related to burning body fat. However, weight loss by cycling is boosted with a healthy eating plan.

Next, riding a bike also builds muscle, specially around the glutes, hamstrings, quads and calves. Impressively, muscle is leaner than fat and people with a higher percentage of muscle burn more calories practicing the same sport.

Finally, the immune system is strengthen when cycling. Researchers have found benefits of the upper respiratory system (and reducing instances of the common cold). In addition, mild exercise can improve your immune system by increasing production of essential proteins and waking up lazy white blood cells.

Nevertheless, some research suggests that immediately after intense exercise your immune system is lowered, but adequate recovery such as eating and sleeping well reverses it.

Avoid bicycle thefts

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How can I avoid bike thefts? There are several points you can do:

Always use good bike locks when locking it. For instance, follow the advices here and here
Lock your bike to solid, robust objects.
Lock your bike in place of passages. This way someone can see a theft and call the police or at least threaten him to do it.
If you can, select strategist places to lock your bicycle near such as police stations.
Do not let your bike rest at night under the stars, better allow it to do it indoor.
Perhaps use a psychological trick like this one
Never buy a bicycle without receipt. If you do not follow this advice, you are probably supporting bike thieves and the black market.
If you can, do not legally buy a colorful bike since this fact attract people eyes including the thieves ones.
Decorate your bike with an anti theft sticker. Not sure if this would stop a theft, but at least it can make you laugh:

Bike and psychology (3/3)

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I can not conclude this post series (which started here) without writing about an undesirable piece in the bicycle world. I am talking about the bike thieves. Millions of bikes are stolen every year by mainly young males in gangs. Then, they sell the bikes both on the street and online.

Why stealing bikes is so prevalent? According to police services, it is attractive because represents a low risk and cost activity. However, most of stolen bikes are sold at low, sometimes ridiculous, prices. Thus, the psychology here lies in the economic thinking of earning some money with low risk.

The reasons of bike thieves are varied and range from envy to experience a shot of adrenaline. But I think the most important facts is poverty and sometimes related to drug addiction. In fact, this is closely linked to the low cost point that I have mentioned in the previous paragraph. And I reckon, it is partially and indirectly motivated by the shameful fines this action is punished in most countries. Even in relapses, thieves just spend few months in jail. If only politicians feel the importance of having a bike for whatever need (going to college, university, etc., going to work or to buy, practicing sport, fight against climate change, feeling better, you name it).

Few psychological studies have being carried out in this field. One of them was conducted at the Newcastle University campus. Here, the researchers analyzed the impact of installing signs with images of “watching eyes” with a written message as it comes to bike theft. They monitored thefts for 12 months after an before the signs installation. Several location were divided as control (no signs were installed) and experimental (signs were installed). While experimental locations thefts were reduced by 62 per cent, they increased in control ones by 65 per cent. This suggested the importance of signs, but also that crime was displaced to the control locations. Nevertheless, the importance of surveillance was shown.

According to the report, humans have fast, automatic psychological mechanisms which have evolved to respond to eye-like stimuli, and that even mere representations of eyes affects us. We are eye-animals.

On he other hand, it would be great if thefts perception changes towards a more punishable, risky and highly economic cost activity. Fines and prison sentences should increase in bikes thefts as well as bicycle parts.

Bike and psychology (2/3)

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Continuing with the post series about bikes and psychology that I started here, this time I am going to write about the benefits of cycling at mental level. Generally speaking, pedaling helps build a better brain, structurally and functionally, no matter if you do it indoors or outdoors.

Beneath the brain‘s there is the white matter, which has been likened to a subway system connecting different regions of the brain. A reduction in the activity in this system can slow thinking and provoke other cognitive deficits. Some scientific studies (like this) show the benefits of pedaling. In this case, two populations were compared: healthy individuals and schizophrenia patients. In turn, they were divided into two groups, half of they were randomly selected for a six-month exercise program using a stationary bike, whereas the other half continued with its lives. Brain scans demonstrated that the group who pedaled on a regular basis increased the integrity of white matter in both healthy and schizophrenic brains.

We have a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) that helps maintain existing neurons and create new ones. Moreover, BDNF collaborates in restraining some neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Studies like this one brought to light increases in BDNF levels in volunteers with either type 2 diabetes or metabolic syndrome, both groups practicing regular exercise on a stationary bike for three months.

Using bikes also helps increasing memory and reasoning. In this study young men pedaled a stationary bike at moderate intensity for 30 minutes, and completed a series of cognitive tests before and afterward. As you can imagine, scores were higher on memory, reasoning and planning, and were able to finish the tests more rapidly than before. And after pedaling for just 30 minutes!

Furthermore, a lot of studies have demonstrated that regular physical activity helps prevent stress, anxiety and depression. It also applies to bikes. For instance, this study focused on people with depression who were treated with antidepressants. After using a stationary bike for 15 minutes, their level of cortisol, a stress hormone, declined.

Most studies have been conducted for stationary bikes because of controlling the studies environment. However, cycling outdoors, specially in natural surroundings, enlarges these benefits. It is due to spending time in nature usually reduces stress and decrease symptoms of depression and anxiety. What’s more, there is evidence that the green exercise boosts enjoyment and motivation.

Related to the previous paragraph, in this study this effect was demonstrated on pedaling indoors, though this could be ironic. Specifically, scientists encouraged volunteers to pedal a stationary bike while watching a five-minute video of a green, leafy trail. Three forms of the video were shown: unedited, edited to look red and edited to look gray. Those who watched the unedited green video reported a less negative mood overall. In addition, bicyclers expressed that they felt like less work, even their heart rate and breathing remained the same for all conditions.

Additional benefits of riding a bike are:

It helps you sleep better: Riders who ride regularly are able to get their circadian rhythm in sync by lowering the levels of cortisol. Besides, it can positively affect brain serotonin to improve sleep cycles.
Creative thinking and problem-solving are also improved by cycling.
Studies have shown that employees who ride a bike to work are more productive. Moreover, a quick afternoon bike ride can boost energy levels and help have a more productive evening.

To sum up, mental health highly benefits from riding a bike that every person should do it on a regular basis.

Bike and psychology (1/3)

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I open a three-post series dedicated to psychology and bicycle. The subject of psychology is a field so large that it can not be explained in detail here. Rather, I am going to give some broad brushstrokes.

The first one is the use of psychology as a trick to teach someone to ride a bike. In particular, I am writing about the use of operand conditioning for such a purpose. Operand conditioning is the use of rewards and punishments effectively to encourage and teach whatever behavior to anyone. This theory was explained by the behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner in the midst of the 1900s. Specifically, he claimed that learning involves changes in behavior in response to external stimuli. Do not confound this theory with the classical conditioning which involves reflexive, involuntary behaviors.

In operand conditioning, a reinforcement is anything that encourage or strengthen a desired behavior. A positive reinforcement may be giving something that a person really enjoys after the target behavior is done. On the other hand, negative reinforcement means stopping or removing something that the person does not want. For instance, when teaching how to ride a bicycle to a child, a negative reinforcer could be a day without chores, whereas a positive reinforcer is encouraging words.

Moreover, operand conditioning contemplates punishment. Again, punishment can be positive (introduction of something unenjoyable after a behavior: use of angry words) or negative (restricting access to something enjoyable such as taking away TV or play time).

Overall, punishments are less effective and desirable than reinforcements, being positive reinforcement the most effect conditioning method. Thus, you could try to minimal punishment (better: no punishment) while teaching to ride a bike. The better strategy is reinforce each small step because every step makes a path with teaching how to ride a bike as the finish line. Such action allows teaching to ride a bike faster since the novice gets encouraged and enjoys the process. Furthermore, reinforcements should be sincere, otherwise the learner will not take it seriously.