According to a study appearing in the July, 2006 issue of The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism shows that men who are athletic in their teens enjoy bone-building benefits that persists even after the intense athletic activity has ceased. Researchers monitored 63 athletes and 27 non-athletes for eight years. The average age of the subjects was 17 at the onset of the study.
Measurements for bone density were take a little over two years into the study and 68 months into the study, the athletes had higher bone density than the non-athletes. When measurements were taken 68 months after the beginning of the study, 27 of the athletes had stopped training. The group that stopped training had greater bone loss than the athletes who remained active.
A third measurement was taken 94 months after the onset of the study and 13 more athletes had stopped training. This group lost more bone density than either the controls or the athletes who were still active. However, at the end of the study (eight years after the onset), the athletes had higher bone density than the non-athletes—even if they were no longer training.
