Get on your bike and pay particular attention to your cadence. That keeps you healthy. This advice was given by cardiologist Professor Dr. Burhard Hornig from Basel during a presentation at Zedler-Institut in Ludwigsburg. The focus of the event of Wuerttemberg’s sports physicians and Sportmedizinischer Arbeitskreis Ludwigsburg was laid on cycle sports medicine. Another vehicle that has much potential in particular for unfit people and cardiac patients is the e-bike. Cycling is Germany’s sport number one; 35 millions of people cycle regularly. Reason enough to shed light on this kind of movement from a medical point of view.
About 300 physicians from various specialist fields attended the event at Zedler-Institut in Ludwigsburg and the chairman of Sportmedizinier Arbeitskreis, Dr. Dierk Vogt, showed himself surprised in a positive way by the great crush. This would also demonstrate the important role of cycling in general and as a sport.
One of the crowd pullers of the event was the Swiss professor Hornig, a former cyclist who had stopped his competitive sports career by his own account when doping had spread more and more through this discipline. Other top physicians like the Munich urologist Professor Dr. Stefan Staudte and the team doctor of the German national cycling team, Dr. Matthias Baumann from Tuebingen, informed about cycling as sport with all its facets and about the beneficient effect of cycling for all those who only wanted to stay fit.
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Topic e-bike:
Official statistics indicate that accidents with e-bikes increase. The major problem also illuminated during the cycling symposium: It were especially elder people switching to the pedelec who were underestimating the risks. Many of them are riding much too fast combined with a decreasing responsiveness at an advanced age. The advice of the second chairman of Sportmedizinischer Arbeitskreis Ludwigsburg, Dr. Christoph Lukas: Riding at an appropriate speed and - very important - wearing a helmet. The higher cadence that can be made on the e-bike is especially reasonable for cardiac patients according to cardiologist Burkhard Hornig.
“We must be happy about every single patient that we can persuade to start cycling”, says Hornig. According to Dirk Zedler, head of the test institute of bicycle technology and safety, the e-bike boom caused a significant technology boost in the cycle industry and would motivate yet more people to become healthy and persistent cyclists.
The bicycle saddle:
Pedalling is fun, but the seating position is not always an advantage. In the case of pain and feelings of pressure in the genital, perineal or anal area or even chafing, tingling or numbness, measures should be taken. This is the advice of the Munich urologist Professor Dr. Stefan Staudte. Cycling would make men impotent, is also often said. In addition, severe pressure injuries would cause varicose veins, calcifications, abscesses with scar formation and even infertility. The more kilometres per week you cycle, the higher the risk for such health problems; whereas you would have to cycle more than 400 kilometres per week to determine an increase. The urologist’s advice: to select a saddle with a recess in the perineal area and to fit the saddle, if necessary, with a computer-aided analysis of the pressure points.
Author: Angelika Baumeister
