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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: 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.