The much-hyped size 0 has come under the scanner once again. Teenage girls need to pay heed to this piece of news. A latest study from the Children of the 90s project proposes that adolescent girls who are too skinny could get their bones at risk.
It is known for quite a long time that the quantity of muscle in the body is apparently connected to bone development. But this new study illustrates that fat mass could also be vital in building bone, especially in girls.
The study authors examined more than 4,000 young people aged 15, by means of chic scanning methods known as DXA and pCQT. These techniques apparently computed the form and density of their bones, in addition to how much body fat they had.
Those with elevated levels of fat seemed to have bigger and thicker bones. This association was said to be predominantly noticeable in the girls. For instance, one vital measure exhibited that in girls, a 5kg augment in fat mass appeared to be linked to an 8 percent raise in the perimeter of the tibia i.e. lower leg bone.
Jon Tobias, Professor of Rheumatology and leader of the study, commented, “There is a good deal of pressure on teenage girls to be thin, but they need to be aware that this could endanger their developing skeleton and put them at increased risk of osteoporosis. Many people think that exercise is the key to losing weight and building strong bones at the same time – but this may only be true up to a point. If you do a good deal of low impact exercise, such as walking, you will certainly lose fat but you may not be able to put enough stress on the bones to build them significantly. To offset the detrimental effect of fat loss on your bones, it may be important to include high impact exercise as well, such as running or jumping.”
Since girls are supposedly inclined to have more levels of fat as opposed to boys, even when they are standard weight. These outcomes propose that fat may possibly play a significant function in female bone development.
Building tough bones in adolescence could be chiefly significant for women, as they seemed to have three-fold more chances to suffer from osteoporosis. Moreover, it is also believed that women could experience 2 to 3 times more hip fractures as compared to men.