Fit teens less apt to have chronic pain later on
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Good flexibility in the teen years for boys can lower the risk of tension neck in adulthood, while good endurance strength may do the same for girls, Finnish researchers report.
Little is known about how physical fitness in adolescence contributes to the likelihood of common muscle and bone problems later on, such as lower back pain and knee injuries, Dr. Lasse O. Mikkelsson of the Pajulahti Sports Centre in Nastola and colleagues note.
To investigate, they followed up with more than 1,000 men and women 25 years after they had completed tests to evaluate strength and flexibility, in 1976, when they were 12 to 17 years old. The researchers tested flexibility by measuring participants’ ability to reach forward while sitting with straight, outstretched legs, and their endurance by seeing how many sit-ups they could do in 30 seconds.
The follow-up included 520 men and 605 women, aged 37 to 42. Nearly 40 percent of women reported having tension neck as adults, compared to about 15 percent of men, while 23 percent of men and 15 percent of women had low back pain. Knee injury had occurred in 14 percent of men and 7 percent of women.
The men who were most flexible as teens were half as likely to have tension neck as those who were the least flexible, the researchers found. Women with the greatest endurance strength in adolescence had a 34 percent lower risk of tension neck than those with the least endurance strength.
Physical activity during the teen years also appeared to cut risk of later low back pain, while moderate activity in adulthood resulted in reduced likelihood of low back pain for women. The risk of tension neck and low back pain grew as body mass increased for both men and women, while greater BMI also increased women’s risk of knee injury.
The researchers also found that the men with the greatest endurance strength in their youth had the greatest risk of knee injury in later life, likely because these men probably played more sports, which itself increases the risk of knee damage, Mikkelsson and his team theorize.
SOURCE: British Journal of Sports Medicine, Feb. 2006.
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