Actually now that I think of it, I can give a slight input to that. I stopped riding for 4 months last winter in order to concentrate on other things. After only 5 or 6 weeks my blood pressure (taken during a blood drive) was so high that the nurses kicked my ass out of the blood drive with a note for my doctor and made me promise to go there the next day.

I did and I went onto medications immediately.

Now that I'm about 8 weeks back on my bike, I've stopped the meds several weeks ago (I test my BP daily and my doctor is OK with me altering my dosage as needed) and my blood pressure and resting pulse are both far lower than they were even on the highest med dosage that I ever got to.

I'm also losing weight, which is helping the blood pressure as well. I was never able to lose weight before I started cycling.

If you use non-insurance-copay numbers, I was looking at $250/year for a couple of office visits, another $200/year for tests, and $720/year for meds. That's for a very mild and cheaply treatable condition, but one that, if left untreated could lead to renal failure which is another way of saying "slowly dying" and destroys quality of life.

If you start getting into the fact that exercise has been shown to reduce the chances of everything from diabetes to cancer, the benefits could easily run into tens of thousands a year per person.