When both of my grandmothers fell and broke an arm each recently, I was inspired to find out if I’m doing enough to prevent brittle bones. I was delighted to discover that it’s not too late to focus on building bone density with exercise, for middle-aged me or for my broken-armed elders. We can all benefit from exercises to fight osteoporosis. What we do today, in our youth, middle age, or even in our most experienced time of life can prevent loss (or further loss) of bone density. While conventional wisdom says that most of our lifetime bone mass is created by age 35, there is no doubt that what we do after that counts.
Whether you’ve already been diagnosed via scan or other test with loss of bone density (osteopenia or osteoporosis) or, like me, you simply want to do what’s possible to avoid future fractures, exercise is a viable treatment to improve density either alone or in combination with medications. And the great thing is that, unlike drugs, exercise has few side effects. But not all exercise will add minerals to your skeleton. The best exercises for osteoporosis or its prevention are weight bearing and resistance training.
Weight bearing exercise is simply a workout where your body is supporting its own weight. Walking, stair climbing, dancing, and running are examples of weight bearing exercises. Biking, swimming, or rowing are examples of workouts where the body’s weight is supported by something else and so are not good for building bone mass and density.
While opinions on ‘the absolute best exercise for increasing bone density’ vary even among experts, study after study shows that the aforementioned weight bearing exercises are effective and that there is not really much difference between them in terms of bone density results. That means that, in terms of osteoporosis prevention, walking is about the same as running, dancing, and stair climbing. That’s good news for me, because the only way I’m going to take up running is if someone else takes up chasing me with weapons, but I love to walk. It’s probably also good news for my grandmothers, who cannot take up jogging for mobility reasons but can certainly walk. Some studies show bone density improvement with as little as 7.5 miles walking each week.
Resistance training refers to movements in which something is ‘resisting’ your effort. Weight lifting and newer variations like resistance band work fall in this category. So does ‘picking up heavy stuff’, which is my favorite form of non-exercise exercise. Again, we have excellent news: you don’t have to become the new Schwarzenegger to gain the benefits of weightlifting exercises and its relatives in the strength training category. Several studies showed that moderate intensity strength training was almost as good as high intensity weight training exercises for increasing bone density.
As you can see, it is possible to build your bone strength without becoming an exercise addict – and many of our daily activities can be modified to help us reach our goals. Simply parking further away from the door, doing an extra circuit through the grocery store, or taking the stairs rather than the elevator puts you well on your way – and improves your overall health, too.
Sources:
http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/bonemass.html
http://www.cfah.org/hbns/archives/getDocument.cfm?documentID=22412
