Yeah, makes a lot of sense that the quality of the bone is just as important as the mass but how to do that: Nutrition? Exercise? Both? All he said was they hope to make a "pill" !
How about we actually talk about how taking better care of our bodies instead of relying on pills?
Why bones break more easily after 50
October 31, 2011 | Length: 00:02:41
It may be a bone-chilling fact, but we know that the chance of breaking a bone increases significantly after age 50, especially for women. We know bones lose mass as they age. However, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says what makes them become brittle is more complicated than that. He literally looks inside our skeletons to discover what else happens to bones as they age in hopes of finding more effective ways to make them strong.
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Another pill!!
Posted by David@...
1st Nov 2011
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Impact therapy
Posted by skipdykoski@...
2nd Nov 2011
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Another pill!!
Posted by David@...
1st Nov 2011
+2
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Impact therapy
I'm a 68 year old male and I have no idea of the quality nor density of my bones, but I practice aikido several hours a week where we throw each other around and land on 2+" thick foam mats. I've experienced no diminishment of my ability to move or the strength and agility of my muscles and joints over the last 15 years of doing aikido. My laymen's theory is that after being repeatedly thrown 10' through the air and landing (always safely) that the jarring or impact keeps my bones stronger because of the use it or loose it part of body maintenance. Jogging also jars the bones, but because it is so repetitive and in the same direction and is done on such hard surfaces, I think the joints suffer more over the years than the more random jarring of landing on a mat. I'm a physicist by training, so don't know the physiology and medical effect of my sport, but have a good feeling about it. I'm also vegan and know animal products in the diet diminish blood flow to all parts of the body which may effect bone health.
Posted by skipdykoski@...
2nd Nov 2011
Transcript
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>> Sumi Das: Half of all women, and a quarter of all men over 50 will have a bone fracture in their lifetimes related to weak bones. That's a statistic Robert Ritchie intends to change. Richie, a materials scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is trying to figure out why bones break so easily in older adults.
>> Robert Ritchie: There's been a lot of work over the years looking at the loss of quantity of bone, and now we're realizing that there may be a second, possibly even more important factor, which is this issue of quality. So we look at how the bone itself deteriorates.
>> Sumi Das: Ritchie and his team set out to uncover what changes in the quality of aging bones makes them brittle.
>> Robert Ritchie: Bone is a composite basically of collagen -- it's quite flexible, and a mineral which is very, very stiff. So it's the combination of those two materials that give bone its properties. It's flexible, it's quite stiff, and it has strength and it has toughness.
>> Sumi Das: Using powerful x-ray and electron diagnostic equipment, the team discovered that the collagen that makes bones flexible gets stiff as we get older, and so our bones lose their suppleness, and we never feel a thing.
>> Robert Ritchie: Young collagen is beautifully formed, and it has a mineral in bone deposited in a very regular fashion down it. Collagen from say a 90-year old piece of bone, quite frankly it looks a real mess.
>> Sumi Das: Another aspect of bone quality they studied is the relationship between the quality of collagen in the bone, and how easily it breaks. The poorer the quality, the easier the bone fractures. All bones have micro cracks. In young people they act as shock absorbers.
>> Robert Ritchie: The structure of -- of the bone will deflect these cracks, which makes them more difficult to fracture.
>> Sumi Das: But in older bones, the micro cracks can propagate wildly, and actually weaken them.
>> Robert Ritchie: If these cracks are too many, they can form big cracks and break the bone.
>> Sumi Das: Virtually all drugs to treat bone fracture problems today address loss of bone mass, not loss of bone quality.
>> Robert Ritchie: I'm trying to understand what are the mechanisms, what factors contribute to this. And somebody hopefully in the medical field will be able to use that, and thus make better drug to treat this problem of fractured bones in the elderly.
>> Sumi Das: For Smart Planet, I'm Sumi Das.
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