CHICAGO, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- Looking at mineral supplementation and exercise in mice, researchers at the University of Michigan (UM) found surprising results: nutrition has a greater impact on bone mass and strength than exercise.
Further, even after the exercise training stopped, the mice retained bone strength gains as long as they ate a mineral-supplemented diet.
"The longer-term mineral-supplemented diet leads to not only increases in bone mass and strength, but the ability to maintain those increases even after detraining," said David Kohn, a biomedical engineering professor at the UM.
The second important finding is that the diet alone has beneficial effects on bone, even without exercising. This surprised Kohn, who expected exercise with a normal diet to fuel greater gains in bone strength, but that wasn't the case.
"The data suggests the long-term consumption of the mineral-supplemented diet could be beneficial in preventing the loss of bone and strength with age, even if you don't do exercise training," he said.
While most studies look at effects of increasing dietary calcium, the UM study increased calcium and phosphorous, and found benefits to increasing both.
Though the findings don't translate directly from mice to humans, they do give researchers a conceptual place to start.
The study has been published online in PLOS One.
