OSTEOPOROSIS
How do lifestyle factors affect your bone strength?
There are certain unavoidable factors such as such as age, gender and genetics that can increase your susceptibility of developing osteoporosis and addressing lifestyle factors can help to negate this.
Lifestyle factors that increase risk
Why exercise to strengthen your bones?
It has been widely accepted by clinical research that exercise can improve bone mineral density. Exercises which load the bones with a higher impact than they are used to, are known to be the most effective way of improving bone strength.
Often when thinking of high impact exercises, you may think of running or jumping, however any exercise which places a good load on the bones and asks them to bear more weight than they are used to, will help to strengthen your bones.
How to start?
Include a combination of weight-bearing exercise with supervised progressive resistance training. Incorporating balance and mobility exercises and performing these exercises at least 3 times per week is also advised.
An exercise session is much safer under the guidance of an Exercise Physiologist who can adjust and progress exercises suited to your ability. At Lilyfield Physio we offer group classes and 1:1 individual sessions which specifically focus on increasing bone mineral density.
“We don’t stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop playing”
George Bernard Shaw
Key points
| A general routine and a few key points to follow include: |
- Start off with strong posture. Often using cues such as ‘shoulders supported by legs and trunk’ can be very helpful.
- Choose exercises which include small movements such as stepping, gliding from one foot to feel the weight bearing bones in your legs and trunk
- Progress into whole body exercises such as squatting movements, lifting weight off the ground or overhead.
- Finally working on balance is always important to prevent “silly falls” and the risk of a fracture. Try standing on one foot for as long as you can.
Fitbones Classes
We are proud of the results we have seen from the participants of the “FitBones“ classes over the last 15 years.
Our physiotherapists make exercise fun, challenging and rewarding. We have separate classes for men and women.