The Best Exercises for Strong Bones
It is a sad reality that as you grow older you will lose bone. It happens to everyone to some degree. Older athletes or older people who are active will still have less bone than their younger counterparts.
But even though exercise can only slow down bone loss, you will still be way ahead of the game if you stay physically active. Without regular exercise, muscles and bones weaken at a much faster pace.
Muscle weakness leads to a sedentary lifestyle, which leads to a loss of balance and coordination and an increased rate of bone loss, which leads to falling down, which leads to complications from immobility, which can lead to premature death.
A physically active lifestyle prevents this downward spiral. Strong muscles help you maintain good balance and prevent falls.
Childhood
Osteoporosis has been called “a childhood disease with old age consequences”.
The strength of your bones is determined mostly by how active you were as a
child.
A 1988 study found that post-menopausal women who were active between the ages of 14 and 21 had a higher bone density than women who were not as active.
British researchers found that daily vigorous exercise (20 to 40 minutes) and a daily calcium intake of 700 to 800 mg was the best formula for building bones in children. “Vigorous” exercise was defined as the normal playground activities and sports that children engage in.
Other studies have shown that stop-and-go multi-directional sports like soccer and basketball are useful for improving bone density in children. Jumping has also been shown to be effective for young girls and young women.
A 10-year Penn State University study determined that exercise had a more significant impact on building bone than calcium intake for girls ages 12 to 22.
Weight
bearing
Bones need to be challenged or “stressed” with an appropriate amount
of force to become denser and stronger. And even though the best time to build
bone is during childhood, exercise plays a role in slowing down the rate at
which you lose bone as you get older.
Current research indicates that weight-bearing exercises are the best for bone strengthening. There are two categories – resistance training and impact exercise.
When muscles pull bones against resistance, the bones are stimulated and respond by becoming stronger. Resistance can come in the form of free weights (dumbbells and barbells), strength machines, cables, springs or rubber bands, water (aqua exercise), and body weight (chin-ups, push-ups, yoga, wall climbing, stair climbing).
Walking, running, hiking, skipping rope, dancing, and aerobic classes are examples of impact exercise. Your bones are stimulated by the impact of every step you take while carrying your body weight. Racquet sports and boxing are impact sports for the upper body as well.
Site-specific
The bone strengthening benefits of exercise are site-specific. Only the specific
areas where muscles tug at bones or where weight-bearing impact is applied will
get stronger. In sports where one limb is used more than the other, the weight-loaded
extremity has a higher bone density than the other one.
Lower body exercises like squats and lunges will make the leg and hipbones stronger but not so much the spine. People who lift weights for the upper body have spines that are 10% denser than runners.
This means that you need to cross train or do a variety of exercises to get the full benefits of bone strengthening.
Weight
training
A 2003 study suggests that postmenopausal women will have greater gains in bone
density if they do weight lifting exercises like the bicep curl, lat pulldown,
and military press in a standing rather than sitting position.
Upper body strength training with weights increased the spinal bone density of women ages 35 to 45 by 1.4% in an Oregon State University study. Women who did only lower body exercises like squats and lunges did not see any increases in spinal bone density.
In studies of young and middle-aged women, muscle strength is positively associated with higher bone densities. For older and elderly women, strength training is important because strong muscles prevent unnecessary falls.
Long-term use of immuno-suppresant drugs can lead to premature osteoporosis. It was previously believed that the bone loss was irreversible. However, a University of Florida experiment proved that some of the bone mass can be recovered through resistance training.
Two groups of lung transplant patients were put on either a walking program or a supervised resistance training program for the lower back. After six moths, there was no change in the bone mass of the walkers but the resistance training patients increased bone mass in their lumbar spine by 15%.