This month a special section of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, highlights the ongoing debate in the field of sports science over which exercises effectively build healthy bones. The New York Times' Well blog also discusses the latest research and concludes:
The current state-of-the-science message about exercise and bone building may be that, silly as it sounds, the best exercise is to simply jump up and down, for as long as the downstairs neighbor will tolerate. In studies in Japan, having mice jump up and land 40 times during a week increased their bone density significantly after 24 weeks, a gain they maintained by hopping up and down only about 20 or 30 times each week after that.
Photo by LongitudeLatitude
