How does physical activity affect our bone?

A skeleton that responds to physical activity is borne out of an evolutionary necessity – breaking bones is bad for survival but so too is a heavy skeleton that would prevent us from catching prey or evading predators. Our bones need to be strong enough to support the activity that we do, but not so strong that we are carrying around excessive weight. So how is this achieved?

In this video, Professor of Orthopaedic Biology at The University of Sheffield, Tim Skerry, explains the feedback mechanism that governs bone remodelling in which the bone cells sense the state of strain in the bone matrix around them and either add or remove bone as needed to maintain the strain within normal limits.

Over the next few steps, we will look in more detail into different types of exercise.

Are you surprised to hear that bone can respond to physical activity in this way?