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Riding an electric bike is regarded as one of the healthiest activities you can do – it can improve your fitness,cardiovascular conditioning, brain function, fortify your immunity and boost your sense of wellbeing, among a host of other health benefits.
Improve Your Heart Health
Several studies have demonstrated a connection between bicycling and improved heart health.
In 2017, for example, researchers from the University of Glasgow found an association between bicycling to work and a lower risk of premature death after studying 264,337 people for five years. In fact, cycling about 30 miles a week was shown to significantly lower the risk of heart disease.
“Cycling all or part of the way to work was associated with a substantially lower risk of adverse health outcomes. Those who cycled the full length of their commute had an over 40 percent lower risk of heart disease, cancer, and overall mortality over the five years of follow-up,” said Dr. Jason Gill of the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences.
If one assumes regularly riding a bicycle or electric bike (perhaps 30 miles per week) is similar to bike commuting, it will follow that regularly riding — whether to work or not — may help improve heart health specifically and overall health generally.
Improved cardiovascular health
With moderate exercise comes improved overall health – a common benefit that we hear about time and again from experts. But, one of the main benefits is cardiovascular health.
Cardiovascular health relates to how efficiently your body can absorb and use oxygen, while transporting and getting rid of carbon dioxide. By using an e-bike and getting moderate exercise regularly, your body gently adapts to the activity by creating more efficient capillaries that can swap oxygen and carbon dioxide at the lungs and muscles, and creates more red blood cells to move the gases more easily.
Ultimately, this can make everyday tasks much easier – while you’re likely to feel like you have more energy for those day-to-day jobs too!
in addition, according to Dr. Amar Singal, a cardiologist, “cycling is one of the best cardio exercises for people of all age groups and all body types. It not only helps burn calories and keeps weight under control, but also helps build stamina and increase muscle and bone strength. Being a low impact exercise, it is also soft on the joints and unlike hard gym training sessions, it doesn’t put you at risk of overuse injuries or sprains. This is why it can also be taken up by elderly people who have arthritic joints.”
Improved muscle tone
Man showing the electric bike health benefits of riding an e-bike on a trail
While you can’t see your heart strengthening physically, you certainly can see changes when it comes to muscle tone throughout the rest of your body – especially your legs.
Riding a bike is known to improve your general strength, and by using your muscles more often – even lightly – tone and strength will improve. You’ll notice firmer muscles, especially at the main muscles doing the work, including your quads, hamstrings, calves and even your glutes.
At the same time, riding a bike involves balance and an element of steadying yourself, which means that your core gets a workout too. If you choose to ride a bit harder, even your arms get a light workout too!
Boost Your Immune System
Moderate exercise, like regularly riding an electric bike, may reduce an adult’s risk of contracting an upper respiratory tract infection by 29 percent compared to adults who don’t exercise, according to often-cited research published in The Journal of Applied Physiology.
In addition, researchers at the University of California-San Diego found that just 20-minutes of exercise adjusted to your fitness level can boost your immune system.
Increased metabolism for weight loss
While riding an e-bike needn’t be strenuous, increasing your physical activity also means that you burn more energy. Even if you use your e-bike to gently potter to the local shops or go for a steady ride at the weekend with friends, you’ll be burning more energy than you would have done if you’d driven a car, taken a bus, train or walked.
This means that you’ll be in a better position to maintain your weight or lose a few kilos [4] (if that’s your goal), but the best news is that once you stop riding, your metabolism will stay elevated as you recover. Essentially, you keep burning energy (calories) even when you’ve finished!
Of course, this effect doesn’t last forever – once you’ve recovered from a single bout of exercise, your metabolism will return to normal, so it’s important to keep up regular activity to keep it working for you. Over time, as your body becomes more attuned and adapted to this regular e-bike riding, it will burn more energy at rest as you’ll have more muscle fibres to keep oxygenated and ready for action.
Lower Your Risk of Type-2 Diabetes
“Researchers at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom monitored the impact riding an electric bike had on participants with type-2 diabetes. The study’s 18 subjects rode their electric bikes an average of 13 miles per week for 20 weeks,” according to a previously published EVELO article.
“The subjects enjoyed a 10.9 percent increase in predicted maximal aerobic power over the course of the study. And participants reached 74.7 percent of their maximum heart rate while riding an electric bike compared to 64.3 percent when walking.”
“Riding an electric bike is not as vigorous an exercise as riding a conventional bike or, perhaps, even running long distances, but the activity provides a better workout than simply walking. And, as this study concluded, riding an electric bike may be enough to help reduce the risks associated with type-2 diabetes, perhaps, even playing a role in remission associated with weight loss.”
Improves wellbeing and reduces stress
“People who exercise regularly will tell you they feel better. Some will say it’s because chemicals called neurotransmitters, which are produced in the brain, are stimulated during exercise. Since it’s believed that neurotransmitters mediate people’s moods and emotions, they can make you feel better and less stressed,” according to the American Council on Exercise.
It’s well-known that getting out in sunlight and fresh air regularly is important for our overall health, but e-bikes can offer a level of freedom and escapism to new places that you might not have experienced before. The NHS claims a 30% lower risk of depression for those taking part in physical activity.
Plus, the sheer enjoyment of riding a bike can offer respite from the daily stresses that we all experience, and the endorphins we earn from doing exercise can really help lift spirits.
Improves quality of sleep
Sleep is vital for our minds and bodies to recover. Even on days when we haven’t done very much, we all need to ‘close down’ and achieve good quality sleep to be on top of our game the following day.
By riding an e-bike and doing steady exercise, we can invigorate our energy levels. Plus, while it sounds a little backwards, in doing so we encourage our minds and bodies to get better quality sleep when it’s time to rest.
This can result in a more regular sleeping pattern, and deeper, more restful sleep, which in turn leads to more alertness and readiness for the next day.
Similarly, a University of Georgia study found that when adults exercised less they complained about sleep problems more.
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