Here’s one more reason to encourage our kids to get active – to protect their bones. Preliminary findings in a study from Sweden suggest that early exercise improves bone density in old age. Health.com reports on the study, released on Saturday, March 23, 2013, in which researchers tracked 2,300 youngsters aged 7 to 9 and found that the more kids exercise, the greater their bone density. Further, studies comparing adults and seniors found that those with a history of athleticism and exercise experience less bone density loss and fewer fractures than their more sedentary peers.

The study’s authors followed the children and monitored their skeletal development, recording any incidents involving broken bones. Over the course of the study, they found that a similar percentage of children had fractures in each group.

 

But the study also showed the boys and girls in the daily exercise group had greater bone mineral density than the children in the control group.

 

Meanwhile, the researchers compared the rates of fractures and bone density loss of about 700 former male athletes who were an average of 69 years old with those of nearly 1,400 non-athletes who were an average of 70. They found that bone mineral density among the former athletes dropped only minimally compared to the control group.

Read the full story at Health.com