Osteoporosis. Why is it important? And what can we do about it?
Lifting weights is key to preventing - or possibly reversing - osteoporosis
Osteoporosis!
It plays on my mind.
I already have osteoporosis in my spine. My hip is at the severe end of osteopenia (the precursor to osteoporosis). It probably started pre cancer and is probably genetic. But now I’m on hormone therapy, which accelerates bone loss, I feel vulnerable - in a way I never did before.
1 in 3 women will have an osteoporotic break in their lifetime. 1 in 10 men. Many don’t recover. Or don’t recover fully, seriously impacting their quality of life.
This scares me almost as much as cancer recurrence.
So I’ve been on a mission to understand it better. And to arm myself with the knowledge to fight back.
Here’s a very simplified version of what I’ve learned.
Nutrition helps. Making sure we meet our calcium and vitamin d requirements is important. But that’s very easy with diet and/or supplements.
The harder part to commit to and to get right is - EXERCISE!
The right combination of exercise beats osteoporosis. My research tells me it may even be reversible. But at the very least we can stop it progressing or getting worse.
How?
1. Impact exercise. Which means running and jumping. Impact challenges your bones by creating ‘micro fractures’, which your body then needs to repair and therefore creates new bone.
2. Weights. Lifting weights adds load to your bones and also therefore triggers your body to create more bone matter and increase bone density. Muscle may also protect us from falling and protect us if we do fall. Win win!
Did you know that we completely renew our whole skeleton every 10-12 years. So in the next decade I’m planning on fully reinforcing mine.
Time for an upgrade.
You?