James Daley: Cyclotherapy

Icouldn't help feeling rather angry last week, when I stumbled across yet another newspaper article claiming that cycling can be bad for men's sexual health. I must have seen at least half a dozen of these kind of scare stories over the past few years, but this was all the worse for the fact it emerged from what purports to be a serious academic journal.

"Male cyclists risk impotence," the headlines proclaimed, or "Droop handlebars" (as The Sun sensitively put it). For anyone looking for another reason to avoid trading in their car for a bike this summer, there it was.

But a closer look at the original journal article revealed that, surprise surprise, the conclusions of the study were not nearly as definitive as the headlines had suggested. While the author, Mr Vinod Nargund, a urologist surgeon at Barts hospital in London, had indeed discovered that the chance of men suffering from impotence or testicular damage is higher if they cycle regularly, the most common problems among male cyclists are simply "numbness", "soreness" and "skin problems" in the crotch – hardly life-threatening ailments.

Furthermore, the most serious of health problems only tend to be experienced by those who cycle for several hours every day – and, even then, the damage is often not permanent.

I don't mean any disrespect to Mr Nargund – I'm sure his work will prove a valuable contribution to the field of urology. But was it necessary to press-release the juiciest parts of his research, knowing full well the press would take a sensationalist approach to reporting it? I've heard people who swim are at a higher risk of drowning than those who don't, but I'm not sure it's worth alerting the national media.

In his press release, Mr Nargund explains mountain bikers are most at risk of sexual health problems. What he didn't say, however, was that previous studies have suggested you'd have to spend more than two hours a day, six days a week on your mountain bike to find yourself in any real danger. So that puts the other 99.9 per cent of us in the clear.

In my experience, people will call on every excuse they can when it comes to trying to avoid taking up cycling – and, if we start propagating the myth that it's bad for your sexual health, fewer and fewer people will ever make the shift. A lot of people I speak to already wrongly believe cycling affects male fertility – another myth which can be easily dispelled by looking at the large families professional cyclists such as Miguel Indurain and Chris Boardman have fathered.

Any health professional will tell you the benefits of cycling far outweigh the risks – a message that may not titillate newspaper editors, but which needs to be spread.

Finally – for those of you who are wondering whether my bike got stolen last week, I'm happy to report it didn't. In the end, I settled for chaining it up outside the Shepherds Bush Empire and asking the bouncer to keep an eye on it. He said it would be fine till midnight, but warned me that, if I left it any later, it would definitely get pinched.

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