Cycle to work and you’ll need fewer sick days, new study suggests — as researchers find “further reasons for employers to encourage” cycling

Article highlights:

>The researchers concluded that the study “adds to the existing evidence that regular commuting physical activity by bicycle has potential for reducing sickness absence days by reducing the risk of long-term episodes”. They also suggested it may provide “further reasons for employers to encourage employees to use active commuting” and to potentially “invest in incentives” for those who do cycle to work, such as “providing bicycle benefit, bicycle parking, and changing rooms with showers”.
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>Researchers adjusted the models for socio-demographic factors, lifestyle risk factors and previous sickness absence and to demonstrate absolute risk, they calculated sex and age-adjusted incidence for sickness absence per 100 person years for each active commuting group.
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>It is worth highlighting that the reduced risk of sickness absence days was as a result of reducing the risk of ‘long’ absences of, or in excess of, 10 days. For shorter absences (one to nine days) there were diverging results and “no evidence of a protective association” was found.
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>The findings also suggested that to gain “sufficient weekly amount of active commuting”, cycling is better than walking, and that “high-dose” active commuting involved a “mean of 61 active km/week”.

It was interesting to see that cycling more specifically was a better choice from a health perspective, though both walking and cycling were both helpful. This might not prevent anyone from getting sick, but it looks like those who can stay more active are likely to rebound or recover quicker.

I still use my sick days, I earned them!

In 5 years, I only needed two sick days, and that was only due to a Chinese buffet.