Increase Bone Density with a Foam Roller

Tarin | Aug 4, 2010 |

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You can see foam rollers at gyms everywhere. They are a cheap, inexpensive piece of equipment. Like a lot of mainstream exercise equipment they are underutilized for their potential. Expert gym goers shun them as being for noobs. However, foam rollers have a lot of potential applications that can be used by beginner and advanced physical improvement enthusiast alike.

Lateral Synovial Joint Loading studies performed by scientists like Hiroki Yokota, P. Zhang, and C.H. Turner have shown a variety of ways about how mechanical loading influences bone. In their study on Joint loading-driven bone formation and signaling pathways predicted from genome-wide expression profiles they found that joint loading caused an increase in cortical bone area. Bone density can be increased by an increase in bone size(cortical bone area or an increase in periosteal width), more trabecular bone, or an increase in bone mineral content. Now these joint loading studies were performed on long bones. However, appositional growth on long bones is how short and irregular bones grow in all directions(the bones of the spine and pelvis are irregular bones).

The scientists speculated that joint loading increased interstitial fluid flow within the bone resulting in periosteal shear which caused an upregulation of genes in the periosteum which cause an increase in cortical bone deposition. Also, shear damage to the periosteum releases progenitor cells which can turn into osteoblasts and chondrocytes(damage to the periosteum is very important in limb lengthening surgery).

What does that have to do with a foam roller? A foam roller operates similarly to rolfing(a kind of deep tissue massage). Essentially, how you use a foam roller is that you lay on the foam roller and roll it over your muscles and bones. How effective the foam roller is, is based on how you are able to generate force against the foam roller. The heavier you are, the more effective the foam roller is. Also, the more of your body that is off the ground(and hence on the foam roller) the more effective it is.

For the purposes of increasing bone density, we want the foam roller to work on our pelvis and back. Now for the back, it's hard to get around the ribs. The ribs are irregular bones so they will benefit from the foam roller too(as well the bones of the arms and legs but those are not as easy to get as the back and hips). You can put the foam roller straight between the muscles of the spine and roll the foam roller sideways. This will cause shear strain on the periosteum which will have the same benefits that the interstitial fluid flow induced shear strain had in the joint loading study! The benefits being an increase in cortical bone formation!

If you want an inexpensive and fun way to increase bone density(by increasing bone size with cortical area) then give the foam roller a try.