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Cyclist in London winter gear road bike and pannier - copyright Simon MacMichaelCycle to work and you'll need fewer sick days, new study suggests — as researchers find "further reasons for employers to encourage" cycling
Cycling to work can reduce the number of sick days people need to take, a new study has suggested.
The research — recently published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports — examined associations between active commuting and sickness absences in a cohort of 28,485 employees working in Finland's public sector.
Compared to passive commuters, a high dose of active commuting (mean of 61km a week) was associated with an eight to 12 per cent lower relative risk of sickness absence days and an 18 per cent lower relative risk of long episodes.
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".
Using sickness absence data from nearly 30,000 employees, the research used negative binomial regression to test associations of weekly active commuting with all-cause sickness absence. Levels of active commuting were categorised into 'no', 'low', 'moderate' and 'high', depending on the distance covered.
Likewise, sickness absence data comprised of the number of sickness absence days, with 'short' referring to one to nine days, while 'long' referred to sickness absences greater than or equal to 10 days.
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.
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.
In fact, the researchers found that the lowest weekly dose of active commuting (particularly by walking) was associated with a higher risk compared to passive commuting. They suggested examining more information on the diagnosis behind the absence would be "useful", considering "that the causes of and the risk factors for shorter sickness absence episodes are likely to differ from those of long episodes".
"After adjustments, and using passive commuting as a reference, the highest dose of active commuting was associated with eight to 12 per cent lower relative risk of sickness absence days and 18 per cent lower relative risk of long episodes," the research stated. "Accordingly, the absolute rate of sickness absence per 100 person-years during either follow-up time was lower by 405–452 days and 9–10 long episodes.
"The observed association with lower sickness absence days are in line with two earlier studies where bicycle commuting was associated with lower rate of sickness absence equivalent to one day per year."
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".
Looking forward to future research, the study did note that wearable devices could be used to gain greater insight into commuting behaviour.
"This 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," it concluded. "Our findings may provide further reasons for employers to encourage the employees to use active commuting. The employers could invest in incentives such as providing bicycle benefit, bicycle parking, and changing rooms with showers."
The research into cycling's health benefits has been well documented. Last year, research published in the British Medical Journal concluded that those who cycle to work were associated with a 47 per cent lower risk of death and a 24 per cent lower risk of hospital admission for cardiovascular disease.
However, with cycle commuters twice as likely as 'inactive' commuters to be admitted to hospital after a road traffic collision, the study suggested it "reinforces the need for safer cycling infrastructure" to enable more people to access active travel journeys and the "important" health benefits.
In November, a study by ProPass — an international academic collaboration led by University College London and the University of Sydney — found that cycling one short journey a day is enough to lower blood pressure.
That came a month after new rehabilitation research suggested that in-bed cycling for critically ill patients was found to reduce intensive care stays and improve physical function.
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
Latest Comments
- Dnnnnnn 5 min 38 sec ago
Tend to agree with Rendel - while I'm sure well-intended, it's an ill-judged post.
- lio 22 min 49 sec ago
Well Soudal do sell their products in the UK too. It's what I buy in B&Q because it's the only brand I've heard off and that's from cycling.
- Rendel Harris 39 min 22 sec ago
Terrible story and genuine sympathy for the lady, and I realise this could easily look like victim blaming, but I'm 6 foot tall, male and built...
- bruxist 46 min 17 sec ago
I really wasn't convinced by the inferences in this particular study. I'm certainly convinced by others, but this one seems to miss the most...
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Lost his licence for dui, again?...
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Welcome to Car Crashes into Building.
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You need to watch cyclocross. Maximum 1 hour of racing. Awesome edge of the seat stuff (especially when MVP isn't riding).
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Cases of hung, drawn and caught? Or if not in favour of the rules, hung, drawn and court erred?
- chrisonabike 1 hour 36 min ago
I think that's fair. Just noting that as you've written that you can see that it's incredibly hard to get away from any narrative of "we need at...
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Norwich cycling said it doesn't cut through and uses an exsiting path parallel with the allotment border....
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15 comments
I really wasn't convinced by the inferences in this particular study. I'm certainly convinced by others, but this one seems to miss the most obvious confounder. It covers public sector employees in 4 cities over 2019-2022 and, as Dan notes, the effect noted is on 10-day+ absences.
I can't see why they've omitted covid as a confounder. Being on a bike rather than public transport during this period would have been a significant advantage, particularly in avoiding the main cause of 10-day+ illness.
This (the health benefits) is one of the economic pillars that we can wave at drivers who complain we don't pay road tax etc.
I remember reading somewhere several years ago:
Cycling is a net BENEFIT to the economy of 25p per mile.
Driving is a net LOSS to the economy of 50p per mile.
It would interesting to know what those figures are now.
We don't need to use the individual's health benefits in an argument with stupid car drivers who don't cycle and have blindly swallowed the car-brained rhetoric.
Also, most cyclists also drive a car so unlike many of them, we have a foot in both camps. Lots of us already pay VED as well as a host of other taxes. The roads are paid out of general taxation, just like schools (paid by people without kids, who home educate or who pay for private education), and the military (paid for by pacifists as well as warmongers), for example.
We could instead highlight the fact that cyclists don't cause the 1,500 deaths and 130,000 injuries every year;
That cyclists don't routinely smash into houses, shops, pubs, bridges, schools, signs, trees and countless other objects in addition to thousands of other road users (3 teenagers died in this recent crash in Wakefield while people in Shrewsbury have not forgotten the 4 young lads who died in a North Wales crash in November 2023, with one mother's campaign being discussed in Parliament today);
That cycling does not deter people from using the roads (we already know that perceived danger AKA driver behaviour is one of the main factors that stops them from cycling more, or cycling at all);
Neither does cycling cause any emissions so doesn't exacerbate asthma / COPD whereas vehicle pollution is linked to an estimated 40,000 premature deaths each year [BBC 2016, BMJ 2023];
Cycling doesn't cause noise pollution and the serious stress that it causes [UKHSA 2023];
Unlike car tyres, bicycle tyres don't emit tonnes of tiny particles due to wear - claimed to be 2,000 times as bad as exhaust emissions [EuroNews, Earth.org];
I'm sure there are further benefits to the wider society that I haven't mentioned, which is why cycling is a net benefit while driving is a net cost. Frankly, given the list above, it's surprising that the difference is not larger).
Meanwhile ignorant people using the words 'road tax' really should just shut the fuck up.
Individual health benefits are also a public benefit, though, because it means those individuals are not adding as much to the workload and costs of the NHS.
I agree but it is totally separate to the issue of 'road tax' or the discussion with the car world about cycling's tiny contribution to road danger, congestion, pollution and those other things.
And I've just remembered that I hadn't mentioned the vast amount of public and private space devoted to car parks and the time spent searching for a parking spot. Some drivers love any excuse to moan about parking charges but never consider that the land their car occupies has a cost and/or the charge contributes to the service they require (including at hospitals).
On particles from vehicle tyres, Portsmouth Uni published an article in November 2024 stating that 'Car tyres shed a quarter of all microplastics in the environment':
https://www.port.ac.uk/news-events-and-blogs/blogs/protecting-our-enviro...
Not really - just like all those other things, there is a negative externality of driving (increased pressure on the NHS, due to health consequences of its sedentary nature) that doesn't apply to cycling.
I think you misunderstood. I was addressing the topic of cyclists and a supposed 'road tax' and the way drivers conveniently ignore the many negative effects of car use / benefits of cycling beyond the convincing health arguments.
And of couse almost every driver's favourite moan, potholes. All caused by cars, vans and HGVs and definitely not caused by bicycles.
In Edinburgh - not sure about the pot holes but the giant waves in the road (together with foxholes sometimes) appear right by the bus stops. Correlation ...
Another thing on the pot holes - mostly they appear:
- around utility works "making good" which clearly didn't
- after a previous "quick fix" patch gave out
There's also the fact that even the council workers seem to have issues fixing stuff around grates / access covers etc. when resurfacing.
I suspect how this is all organised - or rather, isn't very well - is a rather large manhole... I suspect political (big and small) structures and responsibilities may play out here (e.g. I think this sort of thing is quite different - and far more structured and regulated - in e.g. NL).
So we now know that one of three things is true:
Ah! The Return of the old 'People Who Are Likely to Develop Lung Cancer Are The Ones Who Are More Likely to Take Up Smoking' argument!
4. There is a common casual factor (or set of factors) that leads to both healthiness and cycling.
The research isn't about overall health but very specifically focused on sick absence days.
A very good point - maybe those who drive are pulling more sickies because they just can't face the morning commute.
Yet more pro-cycling news for the media to ignore! I'm especially looking forward to the 24/7 blackout imposed by the BBC.
No, "for balance" they'll have the Association of Bad Drivers on / some other "I'm in favour of cycling, but..." folks!
No doubt saying that this won't have any effect because most people have to drive for work *. Everyone works from their ambulance / HGV / tradesman's van, see? How would police catch criminals on bikes?
Plus it's been proven that a) all the cycling "accidents" make everyone's health worse overall b) if there's cycling infra / LTNs / lower speed limits those will stop ambulances getting to people / fire engines will be stuck powerlessly watching as buildings burn down c) Oh - and in fact cyclists cause pollution! They make cars go slower (bad for emissions!) and cause congestion, you see d) There will be more accidents because drivers are distracted from their otherwise careful driving by having to avoid cyclists weaving all over the road.
* With a side helping of "between you and me we know cyclists aren't really doing serious work - they're all illegal immigrants delivering takeaways, yoof working county lines, workshy commie/woke types or MAMILs".