Professor Belinda Beck

We know now that the most important thing you can do to reduce your risk of fracture at the end of life is to optimize your peak bone mass.

And so that window is only open in those growing years, the first two decades of your life, basically.

There are a couple of periods where we grow like crazy, the very young years, like newborn through to age two.

We're growing like crazy, and you'd see that almost before your eyes.

And then the next growth spurt is puberty.

And that's particularly in boys.

You can see that happening almost as you watch them.

Really, really important.

And those times that there's enough available nutrition and the loading that the bones are experiencing is healthy loading so that the bones grow in the best possible way that they can and grow as much as your genetic potential will allow.

because genes do determine really the bone that we have.

Exercise in general, I can make this comment very generally about all the tissues in the body.

Exercise is great for all the tissues in the body.

It's great for increasing blood flow and muscle tissue needs to be active to stay strong and get stronger.

Bone needs to be strong enough to resist fracture.

And so Wolfe's Law, roughly, in general, says that your bones will adapt to the loads that you put on them.

And so if you are somebody who has played a lot of, let's say, rugby league all your life, that is a very intensive activity.

heavy loading kind of exercise.

And so that will make your bones adapt to that kind of exercise and be strong enough to accommodate that without breaking.

And you could replace rugby league with any other very heavy loading exercise.

On the contrary, if you go into space and you unload your bones because you take away the force of gravity,