Osteoporosis - 1

As you know, I am often telling you that weight training should be an essesntial element of your workout – and mostly people do this or think about this to help them lose weight or to maintain a taught and trim body. However, there are alos some more serious implications to bone health and investing the time in your body now will pay dividends as you get older.  I will post again about osteoporosis, but here is a general outline and how exercise can help – later posts will look at calcium enriched diet.

Our body is able to continuously recycle its bone mass throughout our life.  However, the rate of bone recycling tends to peak during our youth and decreases after the age of 30. Your bones are formed and re-formed through the processing of certain cells in your body called osteoblasts and osteoclasts.

Osteoblasts originate in the bone marrow and are responsible for the slow process of laying down new bone through mineralisation of calcium. On the other hand, the osteoclasts are then responsible for the demineralisation of old bone cells, performing an important job of eliminating damaged tissue, such as broken bones and dying cells.

These processes are age-related and once peak bone mass has been reached at about the age of 30 we can start to see that the degeneration of bones starts to outstrips mineralisation or bone building effect. So we need to introduce weight bearing exercise at a young age – but this is still important as you get older so that you continue to strengthen the bones within you body.

This picture shows healthy bone on the left and the right shows a bone starting with osteoporosis and showing the start of the "gaps" which makes the bone more fragile and susceptible to breaking. There are other risk factors that can also start to a fragile bone structure – this initial stage is called Osteopenia (meaning loss of bone mass). Without some kind of exercise and dietary intervention, this condition or early stages will most probably progress to Osteoporosis. The loss of bone density loss is gradual and can occur without you noticing any evident symptoms – and the first time you might be aware is when the conditions are well advanced.  You might only be aware that you have osteoporosis with you break a bone by falling or even have a spontaneous break for no reason.  The table belows outlines some of the risk factors for osteoporosis.

Primary Risk Factors - Female, Age, Slight Build, Asian or Caucasian Race

Secondary Risk Factors - Premature menopause,Primary or secondary amenorrhoea, Primary or secondary hypogonadisum, Previous fragility fracture, Maternal history of hip fracture, Low body weight, Smoking,  High Alcohol consumption, Prolonged immobilisation, Low calcium intake, Vitamin D deficiency

            We know that exercise can benefit the body in many ways and luckily, it can help with osteoporosis too.  You will need to take into account the following. 

•  Bone loading - to improve and maintain bone mass
•   Weight training
•  Running – especially up hills
•   Posture - to protect the spine from distortion and help with respiration
• Pilates
•  Yoga
• Core Stability
• Plus, more dynamic exercises
• Balance – to lessen the chances of falls
• Pilates
• Yoga
• Dance
•  Dynamic exercises

This is the first of 3 articles on osteoporosis and I will give you more detailed advice on exercise and diet in later posts.