High Impact Loading Rapidly Improves Bone Strength!

An international team of researchers has examined the question of how bone material strength is affected by mechanical loading.

Their work, “High‐Impact Mechanical Loading Increases Bone Material Strength in Postmenopausal Women—A 3‐Month Intervention Study,” appears in the July 2018 edition of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

The authors wrote, “The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of a 3‐month unilateral high‐impact exercise program on bone material properties and microarchitecture in healthy postmenopausal women.”

“A total of 20 healthy and inactive postmenopausal women (aged 55.6 ± 2.3 years [mean ± SD]) were included and asked to perform an exercise program of daily one‐legged jumps (with incremental number, from 3×10 to 4×20 jumps/d) during 3 months.”

“All participants were asked to register their performed jumps in a structured daily diary. The participants chose one leg as the intervention leg and the other leg was used as control. The operators were blinded to the participant’s choice of leg for intervention.”

Mattias Lorentzon, M.D., Ph.D. is with the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and was a co-author on the study. “It had never before been investigated if mechanical loading can affect the bone material strength in humans.”

“We found a large response to loading in bone material strength and that this effect is rapid, in contrast to structural changes and increases in bone mass which appear with delay. High impact loading can rapidly improve bone quality and material strength.”

“The method, microindentation, can be used to measure bone material strength and that mechanical loading can affect this characteristic rapidly, which could perhaps be useful in some clinical situations.”