Ballet dancing builds bone density in young women

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Biomechanics Magazine http://biomech.com July 2006

Ballet dancing builds bone density in young women

By: Jordana Bieze

http://biomech.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=191601277

As practitioners come to understand the importance of building bone

mass during puberty, finding weight-bearing exercise young women will

undertake can be problematic. But if little girls still dream of

being ballerinas, ballet might be an answer.

Researchers recruited 82 nonelite ballet dancers and 61 control

subjects, all aged eight to 11 when the study began. Subjects were

measured yearly for total body bone mineral content, and biannually

at the proximal femur and lumbar spine, using dual x-ray

absorptiometry. Anthropometry, exercise levels, and calcium intake

were also measured biannually.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the dancers had significantly greater BMD,

adjusted for growth and maturation, than the control group. At two

years, dancers had 0.6% to 1.3% greater BMD than controls except at

the femoral neck, where the advantage was 4%.

The practitioners concluded that the modest site- and maturity-

specific results suggest some benefit from this activity.

The study was published online in April in Osteoporosis International.