There’s amusing statistics that show that if you’re out of shape and a smoker, you get a bigger bang for the buck from getting in shape first than quitting smoking. Disclaimer: not an endorsement of smoking.
This sounds ridiculous until you go to Amsterdam see that few wear helmets there. And everyone is cycling.
They might be more inclined to cycle because they don’t need to wear a helmet.
After years of cycling with helmet you get so used to it and it doesn’t bother you. But how many skip the bike because they never got used to wearing a helmet?
I biked through Amsterdam as a commuter along with everyone else for a week, and it just blew me away. Everyone was absolutely predictable and part of the “school of fish”. No hesitation or ill-conceived politeness.
It was only a week but it was so refreshing. I think about this experience daily when driving because I think of how much time would be saved if people just knew absolutely when to take their turn and took it; instead of processing each decision and deciding based on their current mood. People knew the damn rules and norms.
So, I think it’s a function of having a critical mass, being necessary, and being embedded already as a norm. I don’t believe a city could make riding without a helmet legal and expect any sort of increase in safety …
1. Almost everyone cycles. So all drivers are themselves cyclists. So they treat other cyclists with consideration.
2. The road/cycle infrastructure is set up to separate cars and bikes wherever possible. And where they share routes, cars are often explicitly second class users ("auto te gast" - cars, you're guests).
3. In any collision between a car and a bike, the driver will almost always be the one found at fault.
Biking in Amsterdam is leagues safer then biking in most places in the US, though. The risks are different. Helmets aren't as important if most of your crashes are going to be with another low-speed, mostly-soft bodied cyclist. Traffic and pedestrians are pretty separated and you have your own lanes to cycle in. I'm also pretty sure that a lot of biking is convenient: The local grocery store is just a short bike ride but it'd take 15 minutes by car.
Most biking in the US is biking shared with cars. You probably won't have a bike lane. Most likely, you aren't commuting or going to the grocery store - the grocery store might take 15 minutes of driving but 30 minutes of biking - if you can even go the most direct route legally. Longer biking sessions generally means more risk. I'll take the helmet in places that I must defend myself against automobiles on an unsafe path.
Just remember not to get lulled into a false sense of security just because you're wearing a helmet. PPE is by far the least effective safety precaution.
If you have to ride alongside cars, make sure you practice defensive riding.
Yes this is annoying in all these same debates which point to Netherland / Denmark - the infrastructure elsewhere is just not there. Lanes shared with cars (or just taking away from car lane so no normal cars fits in anymore) isn't a solution, just adding friction danger zone. Or dedicated bicycle lanes wide enough for a single row of cyclists, if even that.
Also look at those 'old' basic bikes they use there, you don't need more on those flatlands and everybody is fine with 20-25kmh. Add tech bros or generally young folks with fast ebikes and escooters going 50kmh and things change.
Yes but there was room for it, you noticed the wide streets? Most European city centers don't have that extra room for 1 dedicated bike path on each side, at least not cities I've lived in. That's cca 4m each side requirement, you would have to tear down whole rows of 150-500 year old buildings which are often protected.
Even Amsterdam has streets which have 0 room, but generally city center is blocked/too expensive to most car traffic to even enter so they manage.
If it would be a easy problem to solve, it would be done or at least almost done at this point. And something tells me it requires certain type of population where respect to others is way above average, that's not granted.
> Yes but there was room for it, you noticed the wide streets? Most European city centers don't have that extra room for 1 dedicated bike path on each side
Many Dutch cities don't either, that's why they disallow cars entirely. Really only Rotterdam has spacious roads thanks to the bombings. Ann I understanding you correctly?
> And something tells me it requires certain type of population where respect to others is way above average, that's not granted.
I'm not sure where you are the casuality here. In my experience it's the more human centred infrastructure design that encourages a higher level of social engagement and respect for others.
But regardless I would find it tragic to condem certain cultures as being inherently incapable of these things.
> If it would be a easy problem to solve, it would be done or at least almost done at this point.
It wasn't begun that long ago in the Netherlands. The vast majority of infrastructure has been built since the turn of the century. It takes a while for other places to really realise that their current models aren't working, and even longer for them to really learn the lessons of the Dutch.
But if you look at cities like London, Leipzig, Barcelona, Paris or further afield to Montreal for example then many cities are actually beginning to successfully integrate Dutch design practices.
Dutch bicycle infrastructure didn’t just happen, our postwar governments were all set on building car infrastructure. They were even planning to demolish huge parts of old Amsterdam to build a highway right through the city. It took two decades of protest and a lot of traffic deaths before the government started the development of dedicated bicycle infrastructure in the 1980’s. You can read more here: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...
Amsterdam’s answer to faster vehicles is to move them to the main road with other faster traffic. Although it is now moving to slow down nearly all traffic inside the city to a 30km/h limit, which will improve cyclist safety a lot.
Counter point: in the last 40 years I have come off my bike only about 10 times and on 2 of those my helmet was so badly damaged that I think without it my head would have been seriously hurt. Those were both low-speed accidents, one was being hit from behind by a car and the other was hitting a nasty pothole.
I've also seen a friend have a high-speed impact: he was airlifted to hospital, survived and has mostly recovered. Looking at the state of his helmet I have no doubt that he would have died at the scene without it.
In Amsterdam they are commuting, and in a fantastic infrastructure where cars get red lights when bicycles approach on an intersecting cycleway. That's probably the main reason for safety and why they ride so much.
There's very few places where the light changes automatically for bikes in Amsterdam - all that I can remember now, don't. The large majority of lights do respond to input from pressing the cross button (also pressable by bycicles), but it's not automated.
They do use "change on approach" lights outside of the cities way more, but in cities it's usually only for trams and buses.
Since Amsterdam is a "peak biking" city, I wouldn't trust the cited study to even apply there and would think that an independent study would be needed since it would be likely an outlier.
Is it that ridiculous? Big tech tracking shows that basically any inconvenience at all causes people to drop off. The page taking half a second longer to load and now you’ve lost a few sales.
There isn’t going to be anyone consciously thinking “I’m not gonna ride because I have to wear a helmet” but instead “eh I can’t be bothered riding” without digging too much in to why.
Bicycle helmets are big. You can't just put them away in your bag when you're done with them. So you will have to carry the helmet alongside your bags etc.
In Denmark, I don't even lock up my helmet. My bike, sure. But the helmet just casually hangs on the handlebars. I've never experienced, nor heard of, anyone losing their helmet when doing this.
Helmets aren’t uncomfortable if you try them before buying them. There are different shapes, materials, sizes and settings.
About finding my helmet, I always attach it together with the bike with the U lock. Unless I’m parked in a secure place where I let it hang on the handlebars.
I’m not especially advocating for mandatory helmets and I’m the first to say absence of helmet shouldn’t prevent you to ride, but if you are a regular cyclist, having one at hand is not a ridiculous idea.
> Helmets aren’t uncomfortable if you try them before buying them. There are different shapes, materials, sizes and settings.
Come on man, I have never rode a bicycle more expensive than $100 despite riding at least 5000km annually. I bet that your helmet costs more than all of my 3 bicycles.
The down-voted comment of mine tells that gloves are far more useful than helmet for a bicycle rider. But I know I have messed with the holy cow so c'est la vie.
I'm a pretty proficient cyclist (lifetime mileage in the tens of thousands) but there have still been a handful of incidents where I've been very grateful to have had a helmet.
It might be the case that helmets are a net negative for casual riders. But whenever I've done a spontaneous unplanned dismount at 20mph I didn't find that knowing how to fall helped me much.
> But whenever I've done a spontaneous unplanned dismount at 20mph I didn't find that knowing how to fall helped me much.
What was the circumstances (type of road and type of bike)? Have you touched the ground with any other parts of body except of palms, elbows and knees? If yes then consider to keep learning how to fall because your falling skill is not that proficient. If not then the helmet was not that useful.
More cyclists on the road makes it safer for cyclists. Combined with risk compensation, this seems enough to make helmet laws a net negative. Well studied. Wear a helmet though, they work!
A better alternative law would be to provide free helmets. People can choose not to use them out of preference but at least they'll have one to make that choice with.
Everyone that comments that "nothing is free" is just being a pedant in a way that means the conversation can't usually go forward as easily.
People do understand that with government programs, "free" means taxpayer funded. As in, almost everyone understands that. The comment isn't needed. Those comments are the reason I put things like "fare free public transport" - not because it is more realistic, but because arguing with these comments is exhausting.
Society is full of things other people helped pay for - and you most definitely use them. Your health insurance company pools money together to cover everyone's ills, for example. You don't pay individually for your infrastructure use - other people help you pay so that you can get electricity. And so on. You can't have modern society without this.
Saying other things that aren't free doesn't make the first thing become free.
People who don't use helmets don't do it because they are too expensive. They do it because it's not convenient to carry, because it's not cool, because it messes your hair, because you need somewhere to store it. (Not) Free helmets solve zero of these problems, it's just a bad idea.
You are just nitpicking on semantics. If the total cost of publicly funded healthcare is reduced from people using helmets then that could result in not increasing what you are "making other people pay" even though you are also offering helmets at no cost. That is what most people would consider free.
People who don't use helmets for whatever reason would be more inclined to do so if they could just go pick one up, and didn't have to pay for them in a store. Even if those reasons are not that they are expensive. It's a great idea.
Well we disagree. I think there's way more effective things you can do, and this is demonstrated by the netherlands where I live. For an idea to be good it doesn't just have to in theory be net positive, many things can be net positive if you use tax money for them. The problem is we don't have an infinite government or infinite resources or time, so we should pick good measures.
All the cities maintaining a bunch of locations full of helmets for free pickup would just create more waste. I bet people would pick them up and just discard them when it wouldn't be convenient to use them. And nobody wants to pickup and wear a discarded helmet that is dirty and was in the elements so there would be huge waste. You can have a similar effect without any waste by just having a class that teaches children to ride bycicles at school and tells them the benefits of helmets and keeps helmets there for that one class. This memory would be with you for life, and you'd make your own decision.
If helmets were cost prohibitive I'd be with you, I believe in using tax money for that kind of stuff, but price is not the reason people don't use helmets.
I’m not the op of this proposal, I never said it was a good idea (neither that it’s bad, I just don’t know). I just said that IF it was a good idea, it would cost less overall.
Except roads for car drivers and then people wonder about this mysterious infinite latent demand for free roads that they call "induced demand". The demand for things that cost nothing is infinite.
Roads have huge utility to society. Unless you want the ambulance to go get you on a unpaved mess and take you back to the hospital banging all over the back. Or that they fetch you by bycicle.
Well obviously roads have benefits. Nobody is saying to abolish roads. But the marginal benefits of more road density really fall off beyond the minimum of “having a road”. Compare two options within a city
1. Redesign a 2-lane (each direction) highway into a 4-lane highway at the cost of several hundred million tax dollars, over the course of a few years.
2. Leave the highway smaller. Re-zone a city to allow small shops within residential neighborhoods, and up-zone all residential land to allow up to 4-story townhomes and condos. Spend tens of millions of tax dollars building a robust cycling highway, and make it safe for people to accomplish basic errands within a close proximity to their home.
For #2, spending of tax dollars is less and people are healthier. You still have roads, but people need to drive on them much less often.
So when the next city proposes an $840M highway revamp [1], consider how you could spend 10% of that funding to increase mobility around the city for residents ($84M could build a lot of safe separated bike highways). While at the same time allowing private development to make natural improvements to neighborhoods by opening new corner stores and shops along bike routes
There's real data out there that while a helmet has better survival rates than not; but cars give more room to bicycles without helmets, so the incident rate is lower.
I think that's pretty true in my demographic - kind of old fat, at risk of heart attacks and a casual cyclist. For us lot heart attack deaths are like 1000x+ more than cycle head fatalities. On the other hand for young cycle racers I'd go with compulsory helmets.
Kind of tacky, but I had a strange "what if" kind of conversation with someone about alcohol. The premise was that more people are born due to drunken sexual encounters than are killed by drunk drivers.
That sounds like the sort of stuff that is completely correct. Low fitness is significantly more risky than smoking. (I am not suggesting that anyone start or continue smoking.)
It's pretty funny seeing people today seethe about the obvious (being unfit is terrible for you) the same way people in the 1970s were seething about the obvious (smoking is bad for you).
There is a reason why life expectancy was dropping in the US years before covid hit.
I asked my parents about the "when was smoking viewed as bad for you" bit. They said late 1980s to early 1990s. They said no one thought it was bad for you in the 1970s -- maybe a stinky habit, that is it.
I grew up in the 70s, and that’s hilariously wrong. Cigarettes had warning labels in the 60s, and cigarettes were called “coffin nails” long before that.
There’s a line in a film from 1983 called The Outsiders which is like “give me one of those cancer sticks”, so I think smoking was understood to be harmful earlier than that.
Nicotine suppresses appetite and is also a potent nootropic. Consuming nicotine in losenge or gum form doesn't have any of the ill effects of smoking or vaping. It's also virtually impossible for a nicotine naive person to become addicted through losenges.
It's still addictive and likely to be horrible for your heart (smoke causes cancer, but nicotine even in low doses causes what looks like heart issues, though unlike cancer these might be reversible).
always wondered what the effects on the gums would be since the saliva concentration would be higher with gums/lozenges and it’s primarily surface absorption vs. airborne nicotine.
I have definitely seen more than a few smokers who quit gain weight, no idea if it's picking up a new addiction or if the smoking subdued their hunger pangs, or some combination thereof.
I remember when going through scuba diving certification, the instructor mentioned that smokers generally get more time out of a tank because their lungs absorb oxygen more efficiently or something like that. And she smoked a lot.
There is no advantage to smoking as a diver. Gas consumption rate in scuba diving has nothing to do with lung absorption capacity (unless you have some kind of serious medical condition). We're usually not exerting at anywhere near VO2 Max. The urge to breathe faster is driven mainly by stress and CO2 levels. New divers are often nervous and flailing around due to having poor trim and buoyancy control. Experienced instructors don't have that problem regardless of smoking status.
Absolutely true, I found it amusing because I came to strongly believe over the years that lack of physical activity is one of the worst things one can do for one’s overall wellbeing. We evolved to be physically active, sitting around all day can be compared to being malnourished or not getting enough sunlight or social contact, etc.
Its not cardiovasuclar, but the top 2 causes of death in the US are tied to obesity, which takes zero time to reduce. You just have to not eat, which is actually time positive.
Most humans are just incredibly bad at impulse control.
To be fair, our diets and lifestyles changed drastically in the 20th century.
When we're bombarded with advertisements of highly caloric, processed, sugary foods engineered to flood our taste buds and trigger dopamine, we can't be surprised that people get addicted to it. Combine that with forms of entertainment, transportation, and a work culture that keep us sedentary, and it's no wonder many people struggle with being physically healthy.
I would suggest that in the next 5 years or so if ozempic and others don't turn out to be cancer causing or have more than awful side effects that we'll see a large drop in obesity, as obesity isn't an easy thing to change. Likely other competitors will come along and use a similar mechanism and Novo won't be able to charge $1000 a month for it any longer allowing 80-85% of those who are overweight to give it a shot.
I think it will be very interesting to see how it plays out and has a lot of positive potential.
I don't think it is very sustainable to have 50% of the population on a biologic medication to help self control, but hopefully it will help individuals and societies change norms.
To frame the discussion as one of either/or alternatives is self-defeating, a more productive framing is what are the various strategies we can employ to reduce obesity?
There are plenty which are unrelated to self-control or personal discipline. One is a sugar tax (not a huge fan personally but it exists).
One I do like is to regulate the advertising and labeling of food. Frankly I'd like to know how many calories I'm eating or being persuaded to eat, pretty much all the time. This is a work in progress with the FDA gradually expanding the types of restaurants that are required to disclose caloric and nutrition info about their food. Frankly I'd like to see it required in advertisements too, if you're advertising a pizza, the advertisement should disclose that there are 2,000 calories in that pizza, many people actually are not aware.
Not that I ever thought they were serving health food at the Cheesecake Factory, but I recently learned that their peanut butter cheesecake is 1650 calories per slice! Almost a full day's calories in one slice of cake! Nearly everyone I've talked to about it knew it was a gut buster but no one guessed that high.
Those cheesecakes are only for special occasions now and it's because C.F. is required to disclose calories, I'd be fatter if not for this simple government intervention. Nothing to do with self control. Apologies to C.F. but with the nation's obesity rate cresting 50% I consider this a wholly reasonable imposition on their free speech rights or whatever.
> Those cheesecakes are only for special occasions now and it's because C.F. is required to disclose calories, I'd be fatter if not for this simple government intervention. Nothing to do with self control
How is eating a cake from a store "nothing to do with self control". It's not like you were buying vegetables and turns out big sugar made the vegetables be worse for you. You not knowing if the cake was 800 calories or 1.6k calories makes it no less about self control. Even to avoid eating it at 1.6k, it's still all just self control.
No, it's much easier to pass on dessert when you know it's 1600 calories as opposed to if you think it's much less. In essence the disclosure of how bad that particular item really is reduces the amount of willpower required to avoid it. If this wasn't true, all these restaurants wouldn't have kept the calorie counts of these dishes secret until the government forced them to share that info.
I mean this is common sense, the more clearly you understand the negatives of an action, the more likely you are to avoid it. And we have plenty of evidence that this works to alter people's behavior through looking at the effects of e.g. cigarette labeling.
Like up until the 1950s we actually didn't have good evidence that cigarettes were bad for you, and doctors actually got on TV and endorsed specific brands, so a lot of people weren't sure. Eventually the studies were produced and doctors started recommending against smoking and smoking started to decline. It didn't decline because people became Badass Willpower Monks, it declined because they were given access to more and better information.
"Less self control needed" which is your argument in this follow-up comment is very different from "Nothing to do with self control" in your original comment.
Why every time obesity is brought up it's always because the environment is bad, food is bad, lifestyle is unavoidable instead of just being a personal responsibility?
There was a relatively recent study that found that BMR has actually been dropping over the last 30 years. The difference in men was large enough (7% iirc) that it would explain most of the obesity epidemic.
Why it's dropping is still a n mystery though.
Nevertheless, the solution is still the same: eat less.
I would like to see replications, as it could just be bad data:
"It is also possible that the long-term reduction in BMR represents methodological artefacts. In the early years, measurements of BMR were often made using mouthpieces to collect respiratory gases, and recently such devices have been shown to elevate BMR by around 6%. A second possibility is that early measurements paid less attention to controlling ambient temperature to ensure individuals were at thermoneutral temperatures."
Thanks for the link to this very strong and now open study.
The authors suggest that the decreased consumption of saturated fats over the last 30+ years is likely to contribute to the reduction in basal metabolic rate and gains in weight. The mouse model component of the study provides some support.
I'm not an expert on the literature, but I do know Bmr isn't a fixed number. It is a function of activity, muscle mass, and other factors.
It seems that a largely sedentary lifestyle free from exertion matches both.
It would be insightful to see the sensitivity analysis for BMR with respect to strength, activity, muscle mass, ect.
I know there is a body of data about environmental hormones and BMR, ect, but my understanding is that the impact is barely measurable with large sample sizes. I expect that it can't hold a candle to activity. In my personal experience, my BMR can easily modulate by 1000 calories based on body composition and behavior. That is a huge impact.
> Nevertheless, the solution is still the same: eat less.
Or make life harder! Quit the elevator. Quit the automatic transmission (and car). Quit the online shopping.
Making some progress with self-checkouts and pointless lineups at airports.
Less jokingly (hard to outrun a bad diet) but more pedanticly: drinking less (alcohol and calorific beverages) might be a better start than eating less.
It would be interesting to correlate these results with data about reduced testosteron levels and sperm counts/fertility, especially whether one of these leads the other or whether both go down at the same time.
clearly there is no "just" to it as a level of effort on the part of those who are overweight. It is not an easy road and something like 95% of the people fail at it, so I guess it depends on what your meaning of "just" is.
People here complain a lot about social media and the tuning for engagement which makes people addicted to their phones etc..
Well compared to the food industry industry that's nothing. Incidentally they learned their trade from the tobacco industry who invested heavily in the junk food industry in the 60s. [1]
All to say, much of modern food (and the advertising around it) is designed to get people hooked on junk food from a very early age. So saying just eat less is a simplistic solution that requires people to act against a conditioning that has been aggressively imprinted on them from a very early age.
Of course. I was responding to the time spent (out of ones day), opposed to calendar days of not eating.
That said, people can make pretty rapid weight loss without eating. skip eating 1 day a week and that is 30 lbs a year for an average obese man. skip 2 days/week and that is 60 lbs/year.
> people can make pretty rapid weight loss without eating
Your suggestion is not sustainable. A staggering 90+% of people regain all weight loss a year after their diet ends. Seriously, who is not going to eat for two days per week? Your mental health would be a wreck. Can you do it? I cannot.
90% of people regain weight because they go back to eating like they have a death wish.
I think conflating between mental health and eating is at the heart of the obesity epidemic. Nobody will die if they skip a few meals. They will suffer some moderate discomfort depending on how much they fixate on it.
I can go a week without eating and a few days is trivial. The longest a human has gone without food is 381 days and they lost 275 lbs
Please do not assume your experience is universal. You simply cannot know how it feels for other people to be hungry, it might be a completely different feeling than what you get.
This. Exactly. It took many, many years as an adult to realise that I was blessed with incredible genes that allowed me to reduce calorie intake without many negative consequences (insane hunger cravings, etc.). My point: I didn't do anything to "earn" this -- it was granted to me by birth. It gave me extra empathy for people who don't have it, who are trying to control their weight. It is a brutal battle. I always have so much respect for people who stuggle with weight gain, but beat the demons and lose weight long term. They really are someone special!
A lot of people assume humans are mechanistic, unfeeling CICO convertors and exclude psychological and physiological realities of losing weight. I've grown used to it. It took several tries for me to drop 50lbs and most of it was psychological and good habit formation. it took about 3 years to complete that journey.
I think the point is rather to communicate that there is no trick to around cico.
Instead, they are reinforcing that the path is clear, and the the barriers Are entirely psychological. Effort to build habits, effort to exert self control, effort to find solutions when you stumble.
If people are looking and waiting for a strategy that makes weight loss easier than inaction, they are bound for disappointment.
Some rare people find a passion that makes the process of getting healthy and fit more fun and easy than getting fatter, but that is exceedingly rare.
EDIT: Now that I've seen the replies, I realize that this is from a very low baseline. I'm personally going to the gym four to five days a week already and my own cardiovascular fitness has not seen much of an improvement in many months.
Not a source, but it tracks for me. Walk, jog, or run daily and you will have massive CV improvement from baseline in 3 months. people can and do go from being exhausted walking to their car to being capable running many miles in an incredibly short time.
The typical human body is very responsive when pushed.
The heart, lungs, and muscles get strong fast. But the bones and tendons take more time. It's best to give them time so you don't wind up with shin splints, etc.
It's the same with lifting and adding muscle mass.
If you've never lifted before and you hit the gym consistently and have the proper diet, you will get some serious "newb gains." The first year can be amazing.
But if you've lifted seriously for a decade, it's totally different. Muscle mass is very hard to add now.
Cardio gains from a coach potato introducing a serious routine will be incredible. I went from not being able to run more than 30 seconds to running a 5k in 4-5 months, and that's without pushing myself extremely hard.
I went from having not run in years to running a 5k in about 2 months. I was obese when I hit that goal, though I recently graduated to being merely overweight.
My VO2 max as reported by my Apple Watch has been making steady gains, though I'm still far below average for my age.
It’s true. Between myself and some close friends I have seen the following in ~6 months:
- unable to run -> run a 10k
- increase of ~50% in a all out 20 minute cycling test
- max mile time 9min->6:30min
The human body can make incredible cardiovascular leaps when starting from a relatively low point
9 weeks. I have basic fitness but have never been close to completing a 5km run (I think I finally realised I have breathing issues - seeing an ENT soon).
n=1, but I can personally attest to going from average sedentary 29 year old to marathon running shape in roughly 3 weeks of continuous hiking 8 to 10 hours a day in the Appalachian mountains with a pack that was about 35% of my body weight.
the only way I was able to improve mine was to use interval training to get my heart rate up. It took a few months but going from a walk to sprint levels on my elliptical did wonders after a while. Observing my heart rate carefully of course.
