A large international study has found that older adults who regularly ride a bicycle for transportation may have a lower risk of developing dementia compared to those who walk, drive, or take the bus. The study, led by a team of researchers in China and Australia, was published in JAMA Network Open and used health data from nearly half a million people in the UK.
Dementia is a brain disease that affects memory, thinking, and daily functioning. It’s most common in older adults and has no cure. But scientists know that certain lifestyle habits—like staying physically active and mentally engaged—can delay its onset or reduce the risk altogether. This new research shows that cycling might be one of the best ways to do both.
The researchers wanted to explore which everyday travel activities combine both physical exercise and spatial thinking. Past studies have shown that people who use their brains to navigate regularly—like taxi drivers or delivery workers—tend to have healthier brains for longer. Exercise is also known to help keep the brain sharp. Cycling, the team thought, might do both.
To test this idea, the researchers looked at health records from 479,723 people in the UK Biobank. These people had an average age of 56.5 and were in generally good health when the study began. None of them had dementia.
The research team then tracked their health for the next 13 years, focusing on who developed dementia and how they usually got around in daily life—excluding commuting to work.
The results were clear: people who used a bicycle regularly had a lower risk of developing dementia. This was true across different types of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, young-onset dementia, and dementia that develops later in life.
One reason may be that cycling helps keep a part of the brain called the hippocampus in good shape. This region plays a key role in memory and spatial skills, and it’s one of the first areas affected by dementia.
The researchers found that regular cyclists had more volume in their hippocampus than people who used other forms of transport. Even combining biking with another form of travel seemed to help.
The study also looked at people with and without a gene variant called APOE ε4. This gene is known to raise the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Interestingly, even people with this gene appeared to benefit from biking, although the effect was stronger in people who did not carry the gene.
This study suggests that something as simple as riding a bike can help protect the brain as we age. It keeps the body moving and the mind engaged, especially when people have to navigate streets, watch for traffic, and make quick decisions—all of which stimulate the brain.
In short, cycling appears to be one of the most effective daily travel habits for maintaining brain health in older adults. The findings are especially important as the world’s population ages and the number of dementia cases continues to rise.
Encouraging older people to ride bikes more often—even just part of the way—could be a simple and natural way to reduce dementia risk and promote healthy aging.
If you care about dementia, please read studies about dietary strategies to ward off dementia, and how omega-3 fatty acids fuel your mind.
For more health information, please see recent studies about Choline deficiency linked to Alzheimer’s disease, and what to eat (and avoid) for dementia prevention.
The research findings can be found in JAMA Network Open.
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