Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

by Mary Roach

When you fall, the top of your hip—or more specifically, the femoral neck and greater trochanter at the top of your thighbone—takes the brunt of the force in a side-smack manner. That’s not the same architecture that gets strengthened when you jog or do squats. The parts of the bone that are stressed by walking and everyday activity hold up surprisingly well with age. The body tends to redistribute bone to those areas—at the expense of other structures, including the ones you fall onto. For this reason, some osteoporosis experts feel that fall prevention is a better way to avoid broken hips than is load-bearing exercise. I asked Tom Lang whether anyone had looked into the possibility of preventing hip fractures by simply thwacking the aged on the sides of their hips a few times a day. Not hard enough to break anything, obviously, but vigorously enough that the impact would stimulate the osteocytes to strengthen the structure. I didn’t expect him to say yes.

Play roller derby ;p