Bone Metabolic Response to Exercise: Do nutrition, inflammation and body composition play a role?

Exercise, particularly that of high-load and high-intensity, can metabolically stress the skeleton, and in the absence of proper nutrition or sufficient recovery (modulated by the inflammatory response), exercise can have catabolic effects on bone. However, evidence demonstrates that chronic high-load, high-intensity, exercise (with a nutritious diet) can promote anabolism and increase bone mass over time. Understanding the complex physiological interplay between exercise-induced bone remodelling and nutrition, and the mechanisms modulating this process in different populations (i.e., youth, obesity, athletes, and older adults) is crucial to the design of lifestyle modification interventions and recovery strategies to support bone health and decrease fracture risk across the age and disease spectra. This symposium presents current research on factors that promote acute bone anabolism or reduce bone catabolism, thus benefiting longer-term bone health across the lifespan.    

Learning objectives:

Review the current evidence on how nutrient provision, particularly protein and calcium, with exercise, supports the anabolic phase of the turnover process. These nutrients, consumed in isolation or combined with wholefoods (i.e., as dairy foods), beneficially alter the bone turnover response to exercise by decreasing bone resorption.

Review how the inflammatory response to exercise modulates recovery from intense exercise possibly promoting additional benefits. 

Explore the role of obesity in the bone turnover responses to exercise which, over time, may lead to compromised bone health.

1.         Nota Klentrou (Brock University, Canada): The association of acute inflammatory and bone responses to exercise: the role of age and adiposity

2.         Andrea Josse (York University, Canada): Nutritional modulation of the bone and inflammatory responses to exercise

3.         Wendy Kohrt (University of Colorado, USA): Regulation of calcium homeostasis during endurance exercise