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Surprise! Bones release hormones that carry on long-distance chats with the brain and other organs. Studies in mice show these conversations can affect appetite, how the brain uses energy and more.

Long cast as the strong silent type, bones aren’t as quiet as they once seemed. It turns out they have a lot to say. And the rest of the body appears to be listening.

Scientists knew that bones are not just rigid scaffolds to hold up and protect soft tissues. The bones themselves are ever-changing. Day in and out they’re destroying old cells and then creating new ones. This constant turnover, known as remodeling, keeps bones strong and healthy.

Hormones are naturally secreted chemicals. They act like long-range messengers within the body, instructing some tissue to take up some task — and at just the proper time. Several hormones, for instance, are key to directing the remodeling of bones. Emerging data now suggest that bones don’t just inform other bones about when to do something. Studies in mice show that bone hormones chat with a host of organs and tissues, including the brain, kidneys and pancreas.

Scientists Say: Hormone

“There’s so much going on between bone and brain and all the other organs,” says Beate Lanske. She is a bone and mineral researcher at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine in Boston, Mass. Bone was once considered a “dead organ,” she notes. No more. Their active release of chemical signals now suggest bones may actually resemble glands — the tissues that release hormones.

Clifford Rosen is an endocrinologist (En-doh-krin-OLL-oh-gizt) at Maine Medical Center in Scarborough. He studies how bone hormones affect health and disease. He says, “The skeleton must have some fine-tuning mechanism.” That, he adds, must be what “allows the whole body to be in sync with what’s happening at the skeletal level.”

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Yay bones!