CyclingNews author Laura Weislo was present at our October training camp at the Human Powered Health Performance Lab in Wellesley, MA. She wrote the article below on how our athletes access the labs to combat the effects that a career in the saddle has on their bone density

Exercise is supposed to be good for you - and by most measures, it is. However, cycling has a little secret: too much of it is bad for your bones, and you might never know you're doing damage until it's too late.

What makes it so dangerous is that there are few to no symptoms of low bone density, it can occur at any age, and it is notoriously difficult to reverse, especially later in life. Demanding endurance sports like cycling and swimming are increasingly being studied to understand how they can negatively affect bone health.

In 2023, Spanish researchers published a paper entitled, 'One Season in Professional Cycling Is Enough to Negatively Affect Bone Health'. They followed 18 male professional cyclists aged 20 to 40 at the top level of the sport who had raced at least one Grand Tour in recent years, measuring their bone health using various tests during the pre-seasons of 2018 and 2019.

They found that over a single season, there was an overall decline in bone mineral density in these men, which followed previous studies on youth, masters and amateur cyclists and swimmers that showed similar results.

Although bone density can be a serious concern for men, it is even more so for women who face a normal drop in bone density during menopause when estrogen levels drop.

Osteoporosis can predispose sufferers to fractures, especially of the wrist, hip and spine, which can be debilitating and not what active adults who want to keep exercising for their health want. But to truly understand why cycling can harm our bones, and how to combat these negative effects, we first need to go back to basics.