Away with you,
e-bike!

There are things in your life that you should try to put off for as long as possible. Illness and death, of course. With the e-bike a close third. Let me explain this. The electric bike has taken off, and enormously so, with almost a third of the Dutch now riding one. I know the arguments e-bike enthusiasts put forward. It keeps elderly people for whom regular cycling is too strenuous moving! The distance to school or work is such that I would otherwise have taken the car or bus; now I go by electric bike! For a small segment of the population, these arguments hold true. A very small segment. Because a look around cycle paths nowadays almost invariably reveals the following picture: the people cycling around on e-bikes are folks whose legs are still in good working order – they really could cover that little distance on a regular bike. Hordes of school children and students in the prime of their lives seem to find they need assistance peddling. More than half of the Dutch population do not meet the exercise guideline set by the Health Council for keeping your body healthy. The daily drive to school or to your place of study is an ideal time for building a good chunk of exercise minutes into your routine. What happens when you trade in your bike for an e-bike? One: you expend substantially less muscle power and energy. Two: you go faster, so your exercise time is also reduced. Sufficient exercise is not only important for your muscles, lungs and bones. It is crucial for every little part of your body, Nijmegen professor Marie Hopman recently explained to me. At rest, your heart circulates around 5 litres of blood per minute; when exercising hard, this goes up to 25 litres. By increasing this pressure, you stimulate the endothelium, the inner lining of your blood vessels. This reduces the risk of clots and keeps your vessels elastic. These vessels are everywhere, from your kidneys to your brain. Current debate about problematic e-bikes in the Netherlands centres mainly on fat bikes. Fat bikes get souped up; they cause too many accidents. While this is quite true, the regular e-bike is by no means a harmless mode of transport either. So should you be in need of a new bike, whether for yourself or for your loved ones: if at all possible, give the e-bike a miss. Let your legs do the peddling. Your body will thank you.