Pumping Iron Held Boon to Brittle Bones

If you want to help your grandmother avoid a broken hip, get her to pump iron a couple of times a week, a study suggests.

Post-menopausal women who trained intensively on exercise machines twice weekly for a year built up bones, increased muscle size and power, and improved their balance, researchers said.

“Bone density is only one element in these fractures,” said Miriam E. Nelson, a physiologist at Tufts University in Boston. “It may be even more important to improve women’s muscle strength and balance to prevent falls.”

The study is published in today’s Journal of the American Medical Assn.

Fractures caused by osteoporosis--the thinning of bones that accompanies aging--strike 1.5 million Americans annually, mostly women. The fractures often lead to long-term disability or death.