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Human Bones are Quick to Adapt

posted by Woods on Wednesday May 14 2014, @08:57PM   

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

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.

• Summary cut off Summary cut off (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday May 14 2014, @09:19PM

  by VLM (445) on Wednesday May 14 2014, @09:19PM (#43419)

  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.

  Starting Score:	1		point
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• Re:Summary cut off (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:36PM

  by frojack (1554) on Thursday May 15 2014, @07:36PM (#43910) Journal

  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.

  "The key for us was focusing on the difference between each player’s throwing and non-throwing arms, since all other factors -- nutrition, body chemistry, etc. -- were the same," Warden said. "The only difference was the bones in the throwing arm were repetitively exposed to large forces over a long period of time."

  What was the net result of these forces? Bones in the throwing arm of currently playing minor-league pitchers were twice as strong as those in the non-throwing arm. "This is the largest side-to-side difference observed within individuals and demonstrates the level of plasticity or adaptability available in the skeleton," Warden commented. "No pharmacological or other agent comes remotely close to generating this magnitude of bone benefit."

  --
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