GET A GRIP!

The conditions linked to the strength in your hand. This week: Osteoporosis THE harder you can grip, the healthier your bones are likely to be, suggests a U.S. study published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research last year. Scientists found that women with the lowest grip strength had bones that were 11 per cent thinner than those scoring highest.

‘The strength of your grip acts as a proxy for showing the health of bone and connective tissue,’ says Adam Taylor, a professor of anatomy at Lancaster University.

‘As you use your muscles and tendons, they apply force to the bone. The bone responds to that and grows. If your muscles are weak, due to lack of use or age-related muscle loss, the force on the bone is lower, which affects bone size and density,’ he explains.

However, Professor Taylor says that ‘even simple weightbearing exercise such as walking, exercises the muscles and tendons and, in turn, exerts force on the bone’.