Kate C., a RideTHISbike.com reader located in the UK city of Bedford (pop: 140,000 & home to Cranfield University), shared word today of a German study researching the health effects of cycling on pre-menopausal women.

According to data compiled between the years of 1999-2000 by the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, premenopausal women that cycled at least 3 hours per week at a moderately high intensity level experienced a 34% drop in breast cancer risk. The researchers postulated that moderate physical activity may enhance the immune system by elevating the number of natural killer cells.

More information about this study can be found in an article published in 2003 in the American Journal of Epidemiology (Case-Control Study of Physical Activity and Breast Cancer Risk among Premenopausal Women in Germany).

By the way, according to Health Statistics Quarterly Summer 2006, breast cancer is the seventh leading cause of death for females in the UK. Per Kate, that's 12,400 deaths each year in the UK.

My thanks go to Kate C. for sharing word of this interesting study. If you know of a study regarding the impact of bicycling on health, prosperity, mobility, behavior or the environment, please share it with me so I can alert other readers of RideTHISbike.com. Together, we can be part of the solution rather than the problem.

Labels: bicycling-health-benefits