Cycling benefits your mental health because the circular, regular movement is relaxing without putting sudden stresses on your joints. This has been shown to regulate your emotions as well as your breathing and movements. Also, moderate exercise like cycling is known to help with mental health problems such as depression and anxiety. Also, nothing benefits your psyche like fresh air and beautiful scenery, plenty of which you will get on a bike ride.

A leisurely bike ride of 10 mph or less will burn fewer calories than cycling faster in a 20-minute period. A 150-lb. person biking at less than 10 mph will burn 90 calories in 20 minutes, according to the Calories Burned Biking website. By increasing the speed to 12 to 14 mph, that person will burn 198 calories in 20 minutes. A 200-lb. person will burn 120 calories with a leisurely bike ride, but traveling between 12 and 14 mph will burn 264 calories in 20 minutes. A 240-lb. person will burn 144 calories in 20 minutes, while more vigorous biking will burn 317 calories.

According to the British Medical Association, cycling just 20 miles a week can reduce the risk of coronary heart disease by 50%. A major study of 10,000 civil servants suggested that those who cycled 20 miles over the period of a week were half as likely to suffer heart disease as their non-cycling colleagues.

Cycling makes the heart pound in a steady manner and helps improve cardio-vascular fitness.  Studies have shown that cycling to work will increase cardiovascular fitness by 3-7%. Cycling uses the largest muscle groups the legs, raising heart rate to benefit stamina and fitness.

Exercise is known to reduce stress and incorporating biking can reduce stress in several different ways. Biking to work reduces the stress of sitting in a traffic jam, being late to work because of hold ups, or the financial stress to maintain your car.

Long-term stress increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, he says. Research on the precise level of cardiovascular risk is limited, but recent data doesn't paint a flattering picture for the vehicular commuter. A 2012 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that the farther people commute by vehicle, the higher their blood pressure and body mass index is likely to be. Also, the farther the commute, the less physical activity the person was likely to get.

Cycling is non-polluting and can help us breathe easier. Much of the pollutants and irritants in the air are the result of fossil fuel emissions and can cause serious health problems, including asthma, irritation of the lungs, bronchitis, pneumonia, decreased resistance to respiratory infections, and even early death. These health risks are accentuated in children. When people ride bikes instead of driving cars, everyone's health benefits.

The BHFNC review suggests that sedentary behaviour is associated with an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and death from all causes in adults. And, although findings are somewhat inconsistent, this type of behaviour may also increase an adult's risk of certain types of cancer. WCRF/AICR's Expert Report concluded that the evidence that sedentary living causes weight gain, being overweight and obesity is convincing.

Exercise in general has been shown to decrease anxiety and stress levels, and bicycling is a fun way to exercise. Keeping yourself out of traffic jams will also help in reducing stress.

Cycling is a great way to exercise and achieve healthy levels of fitness and activity. It is also fun, cheap and good for the environment. Using your bike to get around is a great way to stay active as part of your everyday activities. Cycling is a healthy, low-impact exercise that can be enjoyed by people of all ages, from young children to older adults.

Why should walking and bicycling be a life-threatening choice? It is not acceptable to spend billions of dollars to pursue outdated policies that would make health problems worse and add to the federal deficit by increasing health care costs. We need a 21st-century transportation vision that gives people transportation options, encourages walking and bicycling, and makes it safer for kids to walk to school.

What we don't notice is that if you were to spend an hour a day riding a bike rather than being sedentary and driving a car there's a cost to that sedentary time. It's silent, it doesn't get noticed. What we're talking about here is shifting the balance from that invisible danger of sitting still towards the positive health benefits of cycling.

Mental health conditions like depression, stress and anxiety can be reduced by regular bike riding.

As a health researcher, I am particularly concerned about the effects of our car-centric transportation laws on physical activity and chronic disease. Inactive lifestyle is a major cause of health costs and death, through its effects on heart disease, diabetes and cancers.

The benefits to the body’s immune system that can be gained from moderate activity such as cycling are well documented. Did you know that your immune system can be considerably strengthened by cycling? It can also protect you against some cancers, increasing the fight against cells that cause tumors.

Cycling reduces the risk of arthritis (or inflammation of the joints) caused by worn out cartilage. Exercises like running put more stress on joints and break down cartilage, especially in the knees. Cycling is gentler on joints and can actually strengthen them because the cycling motion provides nourishment that builds up cartilage.

Bicycle transportation is good for a lot of things — it’s healthy, it’s green, it’s quiet, it’s fun, it builds community. It also makes financial sense, and the magnitude of bicycling’s economic impact gets far less attention than it deserves.

The stress of waiting in gridlock can get intense if you're in a hurry, leaving you feeling frustrated and anxious about the traffic. That stress can translate into deeper health hazards.

The "aggressive, combative, competitive frame for driving" may be linked to our evolutionary past, but it could have implications for cardiovascular disease, says David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah.

“A big pull here is going to be promoting the lifestyle of cycling and everything that comes along with it—the healthy lifestyle, the atmosphere, the camaraderie,” he said. “The whole goal is to promote that feeling of community and unity.”

In many ways cycling may be better than some other forms of exercise in relieving stress.

Governing's analysis of health and census data found a strong correlation between a metro area's overweight/obesity rates and the portion of a workforce walking or biking to work.

Cycling (and other exercise) provides nourishment that discs in the spine need for development. The large muscles in the back develop and become stronger. And cycling strengthens the small muscles that support individual vertebrae.

Cycling can help to protect you from serious diseases like stroke, heart attack, some cancers, depression, diabetes, obesity and arthritis.

The World Health Organization blames 150,000 deaths per year on the effects of global warming including extreme weather, drought, heat waves, decreased food production and the increased spread of diseases like malaria.

Commuting to work by bicycle has many health, economic, and environmental benefits. Riding your bike to work can increase your physical activity and promote a healthier lifestyle through reduced risks of heart disease and stroke and improved mental health. Bicycling to work can also eliminate emissions that otherwise would have been produced when driving, overall reducing harmful effects on the environment.

We know that the decisions we are making today are on track to create irreversible and inexorable changes in the global climate that our children and their children will inherit. We know that those changes threaten to slow or reverse our hard-fought gains in peace and health, leaving our descendants a world in violent, unceasing transition, with rising seas, greater droughts, more intense storms, shifting zones of fertility and disease, and waves of climate refugees. We discovered this not through shock or confrontation but through the slow accumulation and careful interpretation of evidence. It is still, to most people, almost entirely an intellectual phenomenon, something they know but do not feel.

To get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we should take a close look at the bike as a potential solution.

A group of Muslim and Jewish cyclists found common ground Sunday on Chicago pavement as they biked across the city from a downtown mosque to a North Side synagogue.

One of the most important things a bicycle can build is community, as anyone who has spent time at a place like Bike Works in Columbia City can tell you. Just by riding a bicycle, you learn more about the place you live. The way we get around our neighborhoods has a lot to do with how safe we feel, who we see regularly; basically, our sense of place.

Carfree street events take the fun of a street fair and add to it by giving city residents a chance to explore their neighborhoods on foot or on bikes, sometimes for the first time. In places where neighbors live in fear of violence, carfree street events are a great way to take back the street for families.

Commuting by bike reduces pollution that causes asthma and bronchitis. Cycling instead of driving will reduce the 38 million tonnes of carbon produced each year by British motorists and improve the quality of your air. Surprisingly, a cyclist is also less exposed to air pollution than a commuting motorist.

Biking to work reduces damage to the environment and leaves very little carbon footprint. Next to walking, biking to work excludes emissions, oil leaks and other unfriendly pollutants.

But to those of us who join, bicycling as a preferred form of transportation feels almost like a secret club, the key to a more balanced, healthy day and a way to live more lightly on our planet. It is a choice to spend time outside in the fresh air, using the power of our bodies to get around, rather than being trapped in traffic, locked away from the natural world and our fellow human beings.

Unlike a vehicle, bicycle expenses are minimal. Once you've paid for the initial price of the bike and gear there are few costs for its upkeep. Worries over gas prices, tags, taxes and toll fees are not important when using a bike for your main source of transportation to and from work.

Less burning of fossil fuels (gasoline) reduces the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global climate change. Human pedaling is an infinitely renewable resource; gasoline is not.