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 The new findings - including that taking public transportation was
just as beneficial as the other “active commuting” modes - point to
significant health benefits across society if more people left their
cars at home, researchers say.
“It seems to suggest switching your commute mode - where you can
build in just a bit of incidental physical activity - you may be
able to cut down on your chance of being overweight and achieve a
healthier body composition as well,” said Ellen Flint, who led the
study.
Flint and her colleagues from London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine and University College London write at TheBMJ.com that
physical activity has decreased along with the proportion of people
taking active modes of transportation to work.
There is also evidence to suggest greater increases in obesity rates
in areas with larger declines in active travel, they add.
Active travel or commuting typically refers to walking or biking to
work, but Flint and her colleagues suggest the term should be
expanded to include taking public transportation, such as buses and
trains.
In their study, Flint said, they found people who reported walking
to work weren’t walking far - about a mile or less.
“The walking that goes into commuting to public transport is a
similar amount,” she told Reuters Health.
While there is evidence to support a link between walking and biking
to work and reduced weight, there is little research that also looks
at people who take public transportation.
For the new study, Flint and her colleagues used data collected from
a national sample of people living in the UK who answered survey
questions and were visited by a nurse. The researchers had data from
7,424 people on how much body fat they had and from 7,534 on their
body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight relative to height.
In the survey, 76 percent of men and 72 percent of women reported
taking a private mode of transportation - usually a car - to work.
Ten percent of men and 11 percent of women reported using mostly
public transportation and 14 percent of men and 17 percent of women
walked or biked to work.
After adjusting for traits or behaviors that may influence weight or
body fat, such as socioeconomic status and other exercise, the
researchers found that people who walked, biked or took public
transportation to work had lower average BMIs and body fat
percentages than people who used private transportation.
“When you compare public transport to private transport the results
are pretty similar to when you compare active transport to private
transport,” Flint said.
She and her colleagues write that the differences in body mass and
fat would be noticeable. For example, men who actively commuted to
work or took public transportation had a BMI score between 0.9 and
1.1 points lower than the men who drove themselves. That can be the
equivalent of weighing about seven pounds less for a middle aged man
of average height.
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The men’s body fat was also between 1.4 and 1.5 percentage points
lower among active and public transport commuters, compared to men
who drove.
Similar results were seen for women, whose BMI scores were between
0.7 and 0.9 points lower among active and public commuters compared
to women who drove. For a 5-foot 4-inch woman the difference would
translate to about 6 lbs.
Amy Auchincloss of Drexel University in Philadelphia said the
study’s results are strong because its data are from people living
in many different areas, although the findings can’t prove that
walking, biking or taking public transportation causes people to
lose weight.
“But at minimum it appears from these preliminary data that not
driving/not using automobiles will at least aide populations in
healthier weight maintenance - if not directly lead to healthier
weight,” Auchincloss, who was not involved with the new study, said
in an email.
Other studies have also suggested that a more active commute to work
has a variety of benefits, according to Anthony Laverty, who
co-wrote an editorial accompanying the new study.
“This study focuses on weight,” he said. “There are other studies
that show people who don’t drive to work are less likely to have
high blood pressure and diabetes.”
“If we had this big shift of people taking public transport, walking
or cycling you would have these benefits add up,” said Laverty, of
Imperial College London.
With obesity prevention already a focus of policymakers, Flint said
working on getting more people to walk, bike or take public
transportation may be worthwhile.
“In Britain - in common with a lot of industrial nations - the vast
majority of commuters use cars. Therefore there is a huge potential
for an intervention of access to public transportation for health
benefit,” she said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/YuljgS
TheBMJ, online August 19, 2014.
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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