Bone Health and Exercise Tightly Linked
Reported May 04, 2010
Many people around the world suffer from a fairly common condition called osteoporosis. This translates in English into brittle bone disease, and the name of the condition implies that patients have very weak bones that are easily broken from efforts which would otherwise have been considered moderate. The affliction generally plagues older women, who tend to have weaker bones in either case. Doctors have been suggesting to their osteoporosis patients to exercise more for years, but now a new study shows that this advice should actually be given decades before the disease sets in.
The investigation was conducted on 2,300 test subjects, all of them male, and ranging in age from 18 onwards. The goal was to assess the average differences in bone density levels among individuals who reported doing sports, and those who were more of the sedentary type. Even moderate amounts of efforts are sufficient to promote a more dense bone, or at least in maintaining existing density. This is made obvious on the astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Even in microgravity, regular workouts prevent them from becoming paralyzed when returning to Earth.
This is an exaggerated example, as microgravity is very harsh on both muscles and bones, and returning astronauts require physiotherapy in either case. But the same holds true with average men over the course of their lifetimes. Spending years behind a desk with only minimal amounts of effort placed in bone health can have devastating consequences later on in life. The new work was conducted by investigators at the University of Gothenberg, in Sweden, LiveScience reports.
The bones respond best when you’re young, and if you train and load them with your own bodyweight during these years, it has a stimulating effect on their development. This may be important for bone strength much later in life too, so reducing the risk of brittle bones, says PhD candidate and physiotherapist Martin Nilsson, who was the leader of the investigation. The study revealed that performing varied exercises between the ages of 10 and 30 has the most significant influence on how bone density will evolve later on in life.
Source : Softpedia
