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Human bones are remarkably plastic and respond surprisingly quickly to change. Put under stress through physical exertion - such as long-distance walking or running - bones gain in strength as the fibres are added or redistributed according to where strains are highest. The ability of bone to adapt to loading is shown by analysis of the skeletons of modern athletes, whose bones show remarkably rapid adaptation to both the intensity and direction of strains.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Angry Jesus on Wednesday May 14 2014, @09:13PM
Conventional wisdom is that weight-training helps increase bone density. But not everyone's bones respond to it. I have read (sorry, too lazy to hunt down the URL) that what does work for everyone is impact. For example, jumping (jump-rope, jumping-jacks, whatever) increases bone density in the leg and hip bones.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 14 2014, @09:37PM
My wife's something of a Tai Chi nut and thats the ultimate in low impact, and isn't just balance but there's some weight-lifting-ish aspects to it (holding positions with arms or legs up etc), so
Arch Phys Med Rehabil 2007;88:673-80.
http://www.treeoflifetaichi.com/Bone_Density.pdf [treeoflifetaichi.com]
Its a review (now 7 years old) of all research done up to '07 on the effect of Tai Chi (aka non impact martial arts exercise, basically) on bone density. The group average bone density always improved; the survey didn't go into std deviations of the group, which is too bad, because your comment implies the std deviation is quite high and for some people it will be zero.
I suppose for some people with screwed up metabolism nothing they can do will help them; so its hard to say what "doesn't help some people" would mean in practice, even if it is the case.
The survey article does mention that unfortunately up to '07 there hadn't been many formal medical studies and the usual "more spending on research is a great idea; oh did I mention I'm employed as a medical researcher?" cheesiness that stereotypically is in all research papers.
The paper also has a fixation on old women. I would guess the bone density improvements would apply to any human being, perhaps just more significant in old women making the studies numerical results more interesting. Or maybe theres some testosterone thing and it has no effect on dudes. Not sure. I bet this is another cheesy "send more money to researchers to find out" thing.
There may be some interesting research since this '07 article. Or maybe not. But this was state of the art a couple years back.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday May 14 2014, @09:56PM
Considering the popularity of Tai Chi in Japan I would bet there is plenty of bone density data there and some control groups of women that don't live in Japan, or live in Japan and don't practice Tai Chi.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Thursday May 15 2014, @05:47AM
Where do you live? I want to strengthen your bones with my bat.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday May 14 2014, @09:19PM
Its a pity the summary cut off just as it was getting interesting:
"Because the structure of human bones can inform us about the lifestyles of the individuals they belong to, they can provide valuable clues for biological anthropologists looking at past cultures."
And then the article goes into some pretty interesting results about ancient activity levels. Basically individual workloads declined. The journalist filter unfortunately fluidly flowed between observed facts and speculation. Workload could decrease due to climate change, ownership of (more?) slaves, family structure changes, death rates / amount of land available... those are just ideas off the top of my head, and none were explored or ruled out just "specialization increased, that's all" So its a mixture of good, interesting factual data, and outright speculation and opinions.
Its an interesting idea and I wonder if anyone's done bone analysis of animals like proto-livestock and proto-dogs and proto-cats to help figure out when they were domesticated. Or perhaps that work has been done and it inspired this human research.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:36PM
There was a recent study of Bone Mass in certain sports, and the degree to which the bone mass persists after the sports are no longer played. Baseball was studied [latimes.com], if for no other reason than there is a wealth of records and baseball has been played virtually unchanged for 100 years.
It was found that “Although the benefits in bone mass acquired during youth may be lost, some of the benefits in bone size and strength may persist throughout life.
Another study [iupui.edu] focuses on the throwing arms of pitchers and catchers, who throw more baseballs than any other players.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Wednesday May 14 2014, @09:29PM
so is this proof that the elephant man was actually brutally beaten as a child and didn't suffer some rare disease?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday May 14 2014, @10:25PM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Wednesday May 14 2014, @10:34PM
I'm glad your sig is apt :)
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday May 15 2014, @12:57AM
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩