Medically Supervised Weight Loss Schedule Helps in Increasing Bone Mineral Content in Adolescents

Medically supervised weight control schedule helps in enriching the bones with mineral contents among teenagers. The obese teenagers who participated in such a program were successful in loosing weight in a systematic way. A year long program at the ‘Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’ established these findings with sufficient evidences.

According to the researchers, the adolescent if the most critical stage of life in which bones take shapes and become healthier in later years. Findings of this research study were published in the current issue of the journal “Obesity”. It involved 62 teenagers with an age range of 9-17 years. The study with in built trials aimed at exploring the effectiveness of a “comprehensive, family based, behavioral weight control program”. Effects of the drug,”Sibutramine”, a weight loss drug, were specifically observed in this study.

Researchers explained that in general obesity is directly related with the ‘high bone mineral density’. When an adolescent individual goes on reducing its weight the ‘bone mineral density’ also goes decreasing. It is mainly because of the reduction in the content of the minerals in bones.

Study results were however surprisingly in contrast to this conventional understanding. Researchers observed that despite the loss of weight in teenagers the bone mineral density was increasing.

Mineral density becomes a key factor in determining the frequency and probability of fractures in the adults. Healthy status of bones in adolescent age is more probable to help maintaining a more healthy bone life in later years. “The amount of bone mass acquired during puberty is the key determinant of lifetime fracture risk”, said researchers in the study report.

With the help of a ‘Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry Scanner (DXA)’, the researchers measured the bone mineral content of the whole body and also of some specific parts of the body including the legs, arms and lumbar spine. Measurement calculations and data thus obtained for all the 66 adolescents were subsequently put to comparison. Researchers found that the mineral content of bones in case of the obese teenagers was higher than the reference group, both at the beginning and at the end of the study.

The ‘bone mineral content’ for each of the teenager was adjusted for respective height. It was then revealed that the bone mineral content at arms and legs showed a less increment than estimated. Similarly the lumbar spine bone mineral content was observed to be higher than the expected.

Researchers attributed these results to the reasoning that such type of changes in the bone mineral content was mainly because of the changes that occurred in the amount of fat and muscle within the body during a weight loss program.

Now days, the growing pediatric obesity epidemic is forcing millions of adolescents across the world to undergo treatments.” It is important to understand the role of weight loss on bone health during this critical period”, said Dr. Stettler, the lead researcher.

Tags: adolescent obesity, bone mineral content, Fitness, weight

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