Cycling Injuries - Cyclists prone to injury and bone density loss

“Sometimes athletes in their late 20s and early 30s will come in for a femur or a hip fracture, and they’ll be surprised because the fall was really not that bad,” says Dr. Max Testa, a sports medicine physician at the Orthopedic Specialty Hospital in Salt Lake City who routinely treats elite cyclists. “But we’ll look at the X-rays and see that there is some osteopenia [lower-than-normal bone density] there.”Cycling Injuries - Many factors contribute to osteopenia or osteoporosis (very low bone mineral density) in cyclists, but one of the culprits is the nature of the exercise itself. Cycling is a low-impact sport that puts little mechanical load on the bones. That’s great if you have joint problems, but it’s the weight-bearing nature of exercise that signals bones to create more mass. Without such stress, bones don’t get stronger, making them more prone to injury.Avid cyclists, both amateur and professional, seem to be especially at risk of bone injuries if they don’t do any type of cross-training. (Swimmers may also be in danger, since that sport requires little mechanical loading as well.) The lower spine is a particularly susceptible area, since it gets almost no loading. The hips may get some from the action of pedaling.Coggan, now a senior scientist and exercise physiologist at Washington University in St. Louis, had been cycling one to two hours a day for about 15 years when he crashed in 1989. “And I recall prior to that,” he says, “when I’d be chatting with a group of cyclists, I’d be taking note of the fact that everybody had scars from things like broken arms and broken collarbones.”Cycling Injuries - A recent study in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise found that competitive male road cyclists had significantly lower bone mineral density in their spines than a control group of men who were moderately physically active while doing other recreational activities. They were also more likely to have osteopenia and osteoporosis than those in the control group, despite the fact that the cyclists had a greater calcium intake.Another study, published in the journal Bone in 2002, found that male road cyclists had lower bone mineral density than male mountain bikers after adjusting for body weight and controlling for age. The difference there could be that mountain biking, with its bumps and jumps, perhaps provides more impact and stimulation for bone growth than does road cycling.Youthful risksYoung cyclists aren’t immune.“You don’t achieve peak bone mass until your late 20s,” says Debra Bemben, co-author of the more recent study and an associate professor in the health and exercise science department at the University of Oklahoma. “If cyclists are in their early 20s and they’re not doing anything else for exercise that’s going to load their spine and help them achieve peak bone mass, it may put them at risk if they fall, since they’ll have a greater chance of fracture. “If there’s a deficit in the energy balance,” Bemben says, “then the body is not able to build things up, like bone.”That caloric shortfall could also trigger other physiological problems, such as hormone imbalances. For women this could mean lower estrogen levels; for men, lower testosterone levels.

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