Bikes are good for you: Parkinson's sufferer can still cycle

Remarkable videos published by the New England Journal of Medicine show a 58-year-old Dutch man with Parkinson’s Disease. He can hardly walk a few feet before suffering from the ‘freezing gait’ typical of the condition – yet he can ride a bike for miles with apparently no problems (both pics).

Of course, the disease has many forms, and we can’t generalise. In 1970s Yorkshire, for instance, Parkinson’s Disease was more familiarly know as the pathological desire to interview people (“Layzengenmen, wyou please welcome, Mister Binggggg, Crosbeeeeee!”)

But what other eponymous diseases have symptoms of note for the cyclist?


Bell Palsy – the furious and ineffective ringing of a towpath cyclist trying to pass a pedestrian deafened by their iPod
Binswanger Dementia – the blocking of cycle paths by council wheelie bins
Bloom Syndrome – the belief that flowers woven into a front basket make a female cyclist look attractively wacky
Bright Disease – the wearing of luminous yellow high-visibility jacket on a fine summer’s day
Brucellosis – delirium common in Australian legislature that believes helmets should be mandatory
Coats Disease – reduced vision caused by the cyclist in front having unfastened flapping outerwear
Down Syndrome – planning of cycle routes involving uphill trains followed by long freewheels
Tourette Syndrome – coprolalia endemic among taxi drivers
Turner's Syndrome – cyclist's belief that they can abruptly veer 90 degrees right or left across lanes of traffic without signalling

Lancet figures it out: less cars, more bikes, more eating out

The Lancet medical journal has just published a series of reports on climate change. One of them deals with the health benefits of reducing vehicle use, and a few newspapers (such as the Telegraph) have tried today to summarise their findings.

Don't believe figures you read in papers by pressurised journos speed-reading the report. They're rubbish at stats. Never get a journalist to work out the restaurant bill unless it's on their expenses. Because this report is crammed full of them, as well as tables, footnotes and caveats. It wisely gives no simple headline numbers. Wading through it is like trying to cycle up Kennington Road at rush hour with all those roadworks.

But the bottom line, unsurprisingly, is that many lives would be saved, and many more years of health enjoyed, if more people walked and cycled and fewer went by car, thanks to reductions in everything from respiratory problems to depression.

However, figures help focus the mind. And their best-case assumption, as far as I can make out, reckons on 500 premature deaths per year in London being avoided, and 7300 extra years of health per year per million population (in other words, I'm assuming, two and a half extra days of good health per person per year; I'll take it as a long weekend in July, thanks).

But don't trust my arithmetic. Read it for yourself, if you have little on at work today. (I once did a degree in maths, so I'm rubbish at numbers. I can only remember my x times table now. Never get a mathematician to work out the restaurant bill, unless the local currency happens to be pi.)

Anyway, their best-case assumes cycling increases eightfold to match that in Copenhagen, Delft, Freiburg etc. Um, right. That's a big if. Though as they point out, it's from a low start: 55% of London car journeys are under 8km, so there's plenty of scope for increasing bike trips. (They also imply that in this scenario, cycling and walking accidents might increase by up to 40%, though the rate of accidents would reduce.)

All of this, though, needs "prioritisation for people who walk and cycle, and restriction of car travel to ensure active travel is the safest and most convenient, pleasant, and quickest way to reach destinations. The reallocation of space to provide a high-quality streetscape that is designed to meet the needs of pedestrians and cyclists is of particular importance."

Oh no! If that happens we'll have nothing to blog about. And I'll end up spending more time trying to work out restaurant bills.