Commuting to work via private transport is linked with having a higher bmi and body fat, compared to "active commuting" (walking or cycling), as would be expected, but public transport use when commuting had a similar effect to active commuting.
A key finding from this study is that the effects observed for public transport were very similar in size and significance to those for walking or cycling to work. This finding may have important implications for transport and health policy, as over the past decade the proportion of commuters who walk or cycle to work has remained stubbornly low outside major cities in the UK. Greater emphasis on encouraging a shift from private to public transport modes may plausibly have significant population health benefits and may be more acceptable to commuters. Such a strategy could also yield large environmental benefits, and could be an important structural intervention to combat obesity.
The magnitude of effects observed in this study were clinically meaningful. The observed effect size for men of around 1 (0.97 to 1.1) BMI point suggests that, for the average man in the sample (43 years old, 176 cm tall, weight 86 kg, and BMI 27.8), this would equate to a difference in weight of 3 kg (almost half a stone). For the average woman in the sample (43 years old, 163 cm tall, weight 72.8 kg, BMI 27.4), an effect size of around 0.7 (0.66 to 0.72) BMI points would correspond to a difference in weight of approximately 2.5 kg (5.5 lb). These differences are larger than the effect sizes seen in most individually focused interventions based on diet and physical activity to prevent overweight and obesity.
(Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @07:45AM
Riders of public transport can't afford to gorge themselves like the fatass owners of private transport?
The additional stress of staying awake and alert for the constant threat of pickpockets causes weight loss?
Being forced to listen to loud public announcements of terrorist propaganda is physically draining?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Thursday August 28 2014, @08:13AM
How about the short walk to the next bus station, the walks between bus station and train station, the fresh air on these ways? Sometimes you have to stay for some time in public transport as well. How about eating/drinking behavior during the commit? Candy is often sold in car-friendly containers fitting nicely into the cup holders.
On the other hand it could be that those using their own car are just generally more attached to their vehicle and use it more in their free time as well, whereas users of public transport might be more flexible in their choice of transport, picking bicycle more often.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @10:20AM
What has the fresh air to do with your weight? Do you think non-fresh air particles somehow attach to your body, making it more heavy?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by q.kontinuum on Thursday August 28 2014, @11:33AM
Strange thought, but I assume you posted as AC anticipating it would shed some light on your peculiar way of thinking...
Actually, I would not think so. But I'd expect that it helps being more alert, which might increase the metabolic rate.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @08:14AM
obese people don't want to use public transport.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Thursday August 28 2014, @10:06AM
Really obese people don't fit in the seats. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop the fat acceptance crowd blaming others [returnofkings.com].
1702845791×2
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Thursday August 28 2014, @08:07AM
You know, in a lot of countries, they still do this, and not only on treadmills in a gym! When I take public transport, I have to walk some five blocks to catch it, a block or two for transfer, and a half mile at the end to get to my destination. Reverse all that on the way back. Beats sitting on my behind and jamming the turbo, while stuck in traffic. On public transit, I say that I let my driver deal with traffic. Lowers stress and blood pressure, in addition to the exercise!
(Score: 5, Funny) by khallow on Thursday August 28 2014, @12:59PM
You forgot "And we liked it!"
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Thursday August 28 2014, @01:03PM
Thats all? You're lucky.
Locally we have public transport for political / bragging reasons but we strongly segregate to control where crime happens so people want to brag about having public transport but they don't want "those people" to actually use it.
So I technically could take the bus to work, but it would be about 4.5 hours per day. A lot of it standing around waiting for busses and transfers. If you have a bus every 5 minutes like in a big city you don't wait, but once an hour and semi-unpredictable means you wait at least 15 minutes. Plus the... well, lets be honest, "white suburb" busses intentionally don't align with the "minority city" busses WRT transfers so there's about 45 minutes of standing. No seating other than teh curb intentionally
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday August 29 2014, @05:53AM
Yes, this is really a problem in America! Socialism is for poor people, the bums! In my particular locale, there is also a prejudice against pedestrians: "I am rich enough to own a car, so you should get the hell out of my way!" Keys in your hand do wonders on such peoples. But I do find that people think that if you are taking public transportation, it is not to be healthy, but probably because you got a DUI and lost your driving license! Only old people and students ride the bus! Oh, Racial segregation is not a big deal where I transit, too many races, but you can definitely see more of some than of others. But the homeless! I don't mind someone down on their luck, whom human services gives a bus pass to, but the certifiably insane people who seem to have lost control of major body functions, is there not something more we can do for these people as a society, than letting them have free access to public transportation?
I have ridden public transportation many places. Light rail in Baltimore was interesting. Montreal has rubber tires, and people making out at the stations. Amtrak, does that even count? Japanese rail, Shinkansen, wow. But in America? We need, seriously, to ban private vehicles except were there is need, and make everyone ride the bus.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Thursday August 28 2014, @08:17AM
Spending time in a hospital has also been linked to serious diseases and death...
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by lhsi on Thursday August 28 2014, @08:24AM
Spending time in a hospital has also been linked to serious diseases and death...
Better warn all those doctors and nurses who spend a lot of time in hospitals. And caretakers and porters. And those visiting someone in hospital. And pregnant women going in for scans/to give birth.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Thursday August 28 2014, @09:18AM
Same goes for those healthy people who drive cars rather than bike or take mass transit...
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by cafebabe on Thursday August 28 2014, @10:20AM
A disproportionate number of doctors die from the specialism that they treat. Given that it has been established that some cancers are viral, repeated exposure to such virii is probably bad for health. Also, doctors are a major source of cross-contamination between patients [wikipedia.org].
Ignoring (potentially) infectious diseases, doctors who deal with accidents may do shift work which is unhealthy. Doctors also known to relatively heavy smokers and drinkers. In general, doctors are quite unhealthy and should be avoided. Likewise for hospitals which are full of sick people.
1702845791×2
(Score: 4, Insightful) by theluggage on Thursday August 28 2014, @09:37AM
TFA isn't displaying for me at the moment, so I don't know what steps the study took to allow for things like people who choose to take public transport being generally more inclined to exercise. Hopefully you don't get into the BMJ without understanding the difference between correlation and causation.
However, I hope the debate over the validity of the study doesn't eclipse the common sense truth: if you want to lose weight, incorporating some sort of exercise into your daily routine (even if its only a walk to the bus stop) is worth more than 100 unused gym membership cards or discarded diet sheets.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday August 28 2014, @10:13AM
Came to say this. In my experience people who use public transport are generally more inclined to walk short journeys than those people who habitually use the car for every little thing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by lhsi on Thursday August 28 2014, @12:44PM
This was somewhat mentioned in the section of strengths/limitations of the study:
A further key limitation of this study, in common with much of the literature on active commuting and health, is the somewhat crudely quantified exposure. UKHLS participants were asked to give their main commuting mode, meaning mixed-mode journeys were not captured. It is therefore likely that the people who reported using a form of public transport as their main mode were highly heterogeneous in terms of the levels of physical activity their commutes entailed. For example, it is possible that some “public transport users” walked a greater distance from home to the train station than “active commuters” who walked from home to a local workplace. This quantification of active commuting may explain why the protective effects of active and public transport modes for BMI and percentage body fat were so similar in magnitude when compared with private transport users. However, sensitivity analyses—in which walkers were split into 1 mile commute distance categories, and cyclists were split into 2 miles categories—did not change the pattern of the results. It is therefore likely that heterogeneity of physical activity levels within the public transport group may be a factor, and overall journey distance or duration data cannot illuminate this further. A high degree of heterogeneity in the three commuting mode categories is likely to result in weaker associations and an underestimation of the true effects.
As an example of what they mean by mixed-mode journeys, my commute includes a 20 minute walk and a 15 minute train, however the train covers a much further distance so I would say I commute "by train".
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @10:22AM
Not to mention the danger of beds. Most deaths occur in bed!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday August 28 2014, @11:59AM
People who commute by public transit tend to be poorer than those who commute by car, and the jobs that poorer people tend to have are frequently more physically strenuous than their richer counterparts. For example, if you work in food service or manufacturing or construction, you are on your feet the vast majority of your shift. By contrast, if you work in an office, you are probably sitting most of the day.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by BasilBrush on Thursday August 28 2014, @09:07PM
People who commute by public transit tend to be poorer than those who commute by car
Depends where you are. In London you will find the trains are full of commuting stock brokers and other office workers.
In America, automobile corporations decimated public transport so that pretty much everyone that can afford it uses a private car. That's not true of the rest of the world.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday August 28 2014, @12:22PM
At one point I worked at an office in northern Manhattan, in a job that occasionally required I wear a suit. I started off riding the subway or subway plus bus, depending on how I felt about the transfers on a particular day (and anyone who's ever ridden the subway in the summer can guess how much fun that is to do in a suit). The journey took 1hr., 10 mins. from Park Slope, Brooklyn. Then I switched to a bicycle. Biking that distance, 15 miles each way, took 1 hr, 5 mins. I changed into the suit at work, in the men's room.
The best part was, I lost 25 lbs doing it.
So, yes, public transportation is better than driving because of the walking involved, but it is hard to imagine it compares to biking in terms of the exercise and health benefits.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday August 28 2014, @01:01PM
The fact that they even mention BMI makes it immediately hard to take seriously. That is the most bullshit metric ever conceived. I just used one of those calculators that told me that LeBron James is overweight.
I'm also sick of ALL these bullshit reports, like how the fact that I'm working a job sitting down is going to kill me. You simply have to exercise very proactively...both aerobic and weight resistant exercises, as do I...period. At 60 I have 9.5% body fat. Just do it, and ignore all the bullshit.
(Score: 3, Informative) by lhsi on Thursday August 28 2014, @02:09PM
If you stopped reading at "BMI", the next bit was "and body fat" - BMI was not the only metric used. Both BMI and exercise was even mentioned in the discussion including how important it is to not rely on BMI only:
Sports participation was adjusted for in the models, as the extent to which an individual may undertake sporting activities may confound the association between active travel and BMI or percentage body fat. Sports participation was found to be a significant covariate in the fully adjusted BMI model for women, but not for men. However this sex difference was not found in the percentage body fat model. A possible interpretation for these results could be that BMI better represents muscle mass in men compared with women, and that confirmatory analysis using percentage body fat is particularly important in this case.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday August 28 2014, @01:33PM
Cities in the southern US in particular score among the lowest for walking. Suburbs are terrible. The South has had the most growth in recent decades, all the years of the rise of the automobile, and city planners were actively hostile towards pedestrians. Some felt that foot travel is a sign of poverty which lowers property values of the neighborhood. They may also have been influenced by marketing from automobile companies.
It's exasperating to see something that would be a short, easy walk away, if only there wasn't a major, traffic congested road in between, with no crossing. Lot of bridges built in past decades spare no room whatsoever for pedestrian traffic, not even a space with a painted line to mark a shoulder, let alone a curb. I have tried walking the shoulder of a bridge that did have a painted line and a little space. Was nearly taken out by an old driver, the kind of old boy who doesn't slow down enough for curves and ends up cutting across the line without realizing it. He went so far across the line that his car almost brushed the railing on the inside of the curve that I was only a few feet from and walking towards. After that, I ran to get off that bridge as fast as possible.
Attitudes are changing again. In the late 1990's, the fact that a new automobile bridge was pedestrian friendly was newsworthy, hailed as progress instead of doubted as a potential for increasing crime. Everyone still knows that people who can't afford cars are trash, more likely to commit crimes, but now admit that sometimes walking is best. Pedestrian friendly is becoming normal, and I hope it stays that way.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @01:49PM
this this this!
Most 'newer' cities that are planed have sidewalks and some even have bike lanes.
In the 'south' you are lucky if the road does not have a 4 inch drop off into gravel.
I could get to the store or work in under 20 mins walking. I wouldnt dare do it for fear of being splattered by a car. The bridge I have to cross was built in the 40s. There is no where to walk on it and I cant run at 50MPH.
Well my job is taking care of it. They told me to move to a heavily urban area. Where I can have a 2 hour commute. But at least they have bike lanes there... Which I will never get to use because I will be too busy commuting in my car.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday August 28 2014, @02:30PM
Specifically, there are areas of most cities in the US that do their best to avoid both foot traffic and public transit access for fear of enabling "those people" to get to those neighborhoods. The idea is to create an economic barrier of having enough for a decent car before you can be in a particular place, while the police come up with pretexts to ensure that those who could drive to an area that the town doesn't want around are pulled over and harassed.
I've used my local transit system (in a fairly major US city) enough to know that the vast majority of the folks using it are people going to and from work and school. Some poor people are trash, but a lot of poor people are not only not trash but work harder than I've ever managed to. And a lot of people with cars are trash too, so I'm not clear why "everyone still knows" something that isn't true.
Another way of putting it: I feel a lot more at risk of losing everything when I'm in a meeting with a banker than I felt walking through the worst neighborhood of my city at 2 AM on a Saturday (a train route shut down at the wrong time). That's because if I'm mugged on the street, I'll probably just lose what's in my pockets if I cooperate (worth maybe $200), but if I'm robbed by the bank I could well lose everything I have and more (worth closer to $250,000).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Thursday August 28 2014, @04:42PM
All together now. Correlation is NOT causation. Saying two things are observed together does not mean one causes the other.
Second big point. The Omitted Variable Bias is a real thing. Are the only things they looked at "how you commuted to work?" Hey, here's a thing to think about - people who own cars tend to be WEALTHIER than people who don't. Wealthier people tend to eat richer foods and live a generally less active lifestyle. Where's THAT controlled for (the article mentions a DIFFERENT study that controls for this, but AFAICT this study did not.)
It looks like they took a dataset and just plopped it into a simple regression analysis, and published whatever came out. Sorry, but this feels like B- work in a college statistics class.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28 2014, @04:54PM
> 3 kg (almost half a stone)
Can we get that in LoCs?