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posted by janrinok on Friday December 26 2014, @12:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the dem-bones-dem-bones-dem-dry-bones dept.

Nicholas St. Fluer reports at The Atlantic that according to researchers, our convenient, sedentary way of life is making our bones weak foretelling a future with increasing fractures, breaks, and osteoporosis. For thousands of years, hunter-gatherers trekked on strenuous ventures for food with dense skeletons supporting their movements and a new study pinpoints the origin of weaker bones at the beginning of the Holocene epoch roughly 12,000 years ago, when humans began adopting agriculture. “Modern human skeletons have shifted quite recently towards lighter—more fragile, if you like—bodies. It started when we adopted agriculture. Our diets changed. Our levels of activity changed,” says Habiba Chirchir, A second study attributes joint bone weakness to different levels of physical activity in ancient human societies, also related to hunting versus farming.

The team scanned circular cross-sections of seven bones in the upper and lower limb joints in chimpanzees, Bornean orangutans and baboons. They also scanned the same bones in modern and early modern humans as well as Neanderthals, Paranthropus robustus, Australopithecus africanus and other Australopithecines. They then measured the amount of white bone in the scans against the total area to find the trabecular bone density. Crunching the numbers confirmed their visual suspicions. Modern humans had 50 to 75 percent less dense trabecular bone than chimpanzees, and some hominins had bones that were twice as dense compared to those in modern humans. Both studies have implications for modern human health and the importance of physical activity to bone strength. “The lightly-built skeleton of modern humans has a direct and important impact on bone strength and stiffness,” says Tim Ryan. That's because lightness can translate to weakness—more broken bones and a higher incidence of osteoporosis and age-related bone loss. The researchers warn that with the desk-bound lives that many people lead today, our bones may have become even more brittle than ever before. “We are not challenging our bones with enough loading," says Colin Shaw, "predisposing us to have weaker bones so that, as we age, situations arise where bones are breaking when, previously, they would not have."

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by kaszz on Friday December 26 2014, @01:03PM

    by kaszz (4211) on Friday December 26 2014, @01:03PM (#129270) Journal

    "our convenient, sedentary way of life is making our bones weak"

    So get out and move your ass. It's that simple even if circumstances can be complicated. Neighborhoods with every spot built upon, blocking roads, crime ridden, or just too many tasks to deal with etc.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by art guerrilla on Friday December 26 2014, @03:01PM

    by art guerrilla (3082) on Friday December 26 2014, @03:01PM (#129280)

    i was going to moderate in this thread, but want to amplify what you are saying, and how it is undermined by a bizarro-world society...

    not sure your age, but when i was a yard ape, we were outside ALL the fucking time, roaming around (lots of times where we 'weren't supposed to'), almost (mostly) getting into/out of trouble (of a minor and inconsequential nature), playing kickball with rules made up as we went, climbing trees taller than our house, riding our bikes EVERYWHERE (WITHOUT helmets ! ! ! *gasp*), getting chased by dogs, shooting slingshots at things we probably shouldn't have, playing war with sticks, throwing water balloons at each other, making mudpies, throwing mud pies at each other, whacking hornet's nests (and it IS as stupid an idea as you would imagine, but it will spike your adrenalin!), making tree forts, making leaf forts, making cardboard box forts, making snow forts, having vicious snowball fights, sledding until you were encrusted in snow and your snot was frozen, conversely, running around summer days/nights until we had dirt in every crease of our skins, then running through the sprinklers...
    dog damn, those was some good times... probably the last time i was truly 'free', in many respects...
    now ? ? ?
    r u fuggin' kiddin' me ?
    99% of that shit is illegal or would land the parents in jail and the kids in 'protective kidnapping, er, services', and a lifetime of being in/out of various institutions and jails...
    LIFE has been criminalized, and it is only a matter of if/when sauron turns his all-seeing gaze in your direction and decides to jack you up...
    we are ALL vulnerable...

    Empire must fall.
    the sooner the fall,
    the gentler for all...