Low bone density is a major concern as we age. About 1 in 3 women and 1 in 5 men over the age of 50 will experience an osteoporotic fracture according to the International Osteoporosis Foundation. That is the bad news.
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What can we do to mitigate this risk? Besides taking medications and supplements- there is exercise. Importantly though, not just any exercise. While all exercise has many benefits, not all exercise is osteogenic (bone building).
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There are two things (in terms of exercise) that help build bone. One is strength training and the other is impact training.
Strength training helps both muscles and bones by providing the good stress needed to stimulate growth. Having stronger muscles also means joints are supported and function improves as well. Impact training provides the gravitational force to stimulate bone growth. You may know that when astronauts go into space for any length of time, they can lose bone density quite quickly.
I recently read about the LIFTMOR trial and I was blown away. The women in the study were an average age of 65 but some were 70. All had low to very low bone density. One group did a low intensity program (like yoga and low impact calisthenics) and the other group did a higher intensity progressive resistance program with impact training. Both groups did the same volume of exercise – 30 minutes, twice a week for 8 months. Compliance was high – greater than 87% across the study. They measured bone density, height (loss of height is an indicator of low bone density) as well as functional performance.
The researchers knew that resistance and impact training helped bone density, but conventional wisdom was to steer people with low bone density away from this type of exercise for fear of fracture. They wanted to see if under guidance and supervision they could train the women well enough in a few select exercises.
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This resistance trained group gained bone density, height and functional strength while the low impact control group lost ground in all these areas. One injury of a strained lower back (in the resistance group) was reported but it only caused her to miss 2 of the 70 sessions. Zero fractures. This is kind of astonishing! The prevailing wisdom was to treat women like this as FRAGILE. As a result, we were denying them the very thing that would really work well to reverse bone loss.
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This is the very good news. We can improve our bone density and improve our functional capacity at any age.
The exercises they did in the study were quite challenging but they spent two weeks just showing them how to do the moves properly. I did four posts with videos about the exercises here on my instagram.
Let me know if you might be interested in strength training by clicking here or if not, what might be holding you back?