Vital at every age for healthy bones, exercise is important for treating and preventing osteoporosis. Not only does exercise improve your bone health, it also increases muscle strength, coordination and balance, and it leads to better overall health.
Why Exercise?
Like muscle, bone is living tissue that responds to exercise by becoming stronger. Young women and men who exercise regularly generally achieve greater peak bone mass (maximum bone density and strength) than those who do not. For most people, bone mass peaks during the third decade of life. After that time, we can begin to lose bone.
Women and men older than age 20 can help prevent bone loss with regular exercise. Exercising allows us to maintain muscle strength, as well as coordination and balance, which in turn helps to prevent falls and related fractures. This is especially important for older adults and people who have been diagnosed with osteoporosis.
The Best Bone-Building Exercises
The best exercise for your bones is the weight-bearing kind, which forces you to work against gravity. Some examples of weight-bearing exercises are:
- Walking
- Hiking
- Jogging
- Climbing stairs
- Tennis
- Dancing
Examples of exercises that are not weight bearing include swimming and bicycling. Although these activities help build and maintain strong muscles and have excellent cardiovascular benefits, they are not the best way to exercise your bones.
Exercise Tips
- If you have health problems – such as heart trouble, high blood pressure, diabetes, or obesity – or if you are age 40 or older, check with your doctor before you begin a regular exercise program. According to the Surgeon General, the optimal goal is at least 30 minutes of physical activity on most days, preferably daily.
- Listen to your body. When starting an exercise routine, you may have some muscle soreness and discomfort at the beginning, but this should not be painful or last more than 48 hours. If it does, you may be working too hard and need to ease up. Stop exercising if you have any chest pain or discomfort, and see your doctor before resuming an exercise program.
- If you have osteoporosis, ask your doctor which activities are safe for you. If you have low bone mass, experts recommend that you protect your spine by avoiding exercises or activities that flex, bend, or twist it. They also recommend avoiding high-impact exercise to lower the risk of breaking a bone. You also might want to consult with an exercise specialist to learn the proper progression of activity, how to stretch and strengthen muscles safely, and how to correct poor posture habits. An exercise specialist should have a degree in exercise physiology, physical education, physical therapy, or a similar specialty. Be sure to ask if he or she is familiar with the special needs of people with osteoporosis.
A Complete Osteoporosis Program
Remember, exercise is only one part of an osteoporosis prevention or treatment program. Like a diet rich in calcium and vitamin D, exercise helps strengthen bones at any age. But proper exercise and diet may not be enough to stop bone loss caused by medical conditions, menopause, or lifestyle choices such as tobacco use and excessive alcohol consumption. It is important to speak with your doctor about your bone health. Discuss whether you might be a candidate for a bone mineral density test. If you are diagnosed with low bone mass, ask what medications might help keep your bones strong.
When Injuries Occur, Own the Bone™
Studies show that as many as half of all women and a quarter of all men over the age of 50 can expect at some point to sustain a fractured bone related to osteoporosis or low bone density.
Recently, Cooper Bone and Joint Institute launched the American Orthopaedic Association’s Own the Bone™ Bone Health Quality Improvement Program to enhance patient care following osteoporosis-related fragility fractures (a broken bone that results from a minor trauma, such as a fall from standing height or less). The program aims to change both physician and patient behavior when it comes to ensuring that patients don’t suffer a second similar bone break.
“The Own the Bone™ program is designed to prevent recurring fractures in patients by increasing the application of current evidence-based guidelines set forth in the National Osteoporosis Foundation Clinician’s Guide to the Prevention and Treatment of Osteoporosis and highlighted in the 2004 Surgeon General’s Report on Bone Health and Osteoporosis,” said Cooper University Hospital’s Paul M. Lafferty, MD, Director of the Own the Bone™ program at the Cooper Bone & Joint Institute.
The goals of Own the Bone™ are to assist clinicians in identifying, evaluating, diagnosing, and treating patients with poor bone health after a fracture, and improving awareness of the fracture risk. In this program, we adhere to evidence-based treatment guidelines and, ultimately, endeavor to reduce the risk of secondary fragility fractures in patients.