Effects of Pilates-Interventional Program on Calcaneus-Bone Density Parameters of Adult Women

Abstract

SUMMARY: Physical exercise has a positive influence on bone tissue and therefore, is recommended in order to prevent the bone mass loss during the aging process. Similarly, normally practice of exercise potentially prevents the incidence of osteoporosis and bone fractures in adult women. In order to evaluate the differences of a Pilates-Interventional Program on parameters of bone density (right and left calcaneus) for six months, a total of 22 women (48.18±9.59) participated in the study. Bone mineral density (BMD) was estimated by the broadband ultrasonic attenuation (BUA) and the speed of sound signals (SOS), through "Sahara" sound device. The BUA showed significant difference in the right and the left leg (both, P< 0.01), the SOS of the right leg (P<0.05), whereas the BMD was not proved to be statistically significant at the end of the treatment. In conclusion, the bone mineral density by BUA increased, while the speed of sound of the right leg decreased. Thus, our findings might imply a better level of bone strength after a specific intervention focused on the Pilates method.

Effectiveness of Pilates and Yoga to improve bone density in adult women: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Considering all participants, 535 were categorised as postmenopausal (90.5%), 34 as premenopausal (5.8%) and 22 as adult women (3.7%) because the study did not report menstrual status. [ 19 ] The mean age of participants ranged from 45 to 78 years and their BMI from 21.1 to 27.6 kg/m 2 . Further details are presented in Table 1 .…”

“…Bone health was assessed through BMD (g/cm 2 ) or T-score values, which refer to the normalised scale for BMD in standard deviations related with a young healthy sex-and race-matched population [38]. The assessment of these outcomes was performed through DXA scans [17,18,[30][31][32][33][34][35][36] or ultrasound bone densitometer devices [19,37] (Table 1). Most BMD measures were from lumbar spine or hip and trochanter area, due to their importance on osteoporosis-related fractures.…”

“…Eighteen potential studies were identified after the screening of titles and abstracts. Following the full text review of suitable articles, 11 studies [17][18][19][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] were included in the present systematic review and meta-analysis, as five did not report the outcomes of interest, one did not include the population of interest and one did not have an intervention design. Further details are presented in Fig 1.…”

“…Characteristics of the studies and the interventions are summarized in Table 1. Among the 11 studies included, five were RCTs (41.7%) [17,18,30,34,35], four were pre-post studies (41.7%) [19,[31][32][33] and two were non-RCTs (16.6%) [36,37].…”

“…However, evidence about the beneficial effect of these exercise modalities is still controversial. While Yoga has been independently associated with a reduction in the risk of lower limb and hip fracture among postmenopausal women [ 16 ], and several authors have suggested improvements in BMD after Pilates training [ 17 , 18 ], other studies have not observed changes following Pilates or Yoga interventions [ 19 , 20 ], concluding that the stimulus caused by these exercise modalities are not appropriate for the bone remodelling process.…”