How to Do Weight-Bearing Exercise to Manage Osteoporosis

It is currently estimated that 44 million people have osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a condition where the bones become porous and fragile and can easily break. This is becoming a major health issue as individuals are more at risk for breaking a hip when they fall and ending up in a nursing home. To help understand this condition, the National Osteoporosis Foundation uses lace as their symbol to represents what happens to the bone. The good news is that osteoporosis can be stopped and, in some cases, even reversed with proper medication, diet and exercise.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Understand the difference between weight-bearing exercise and weight-training exercise. These two terms are often incorrectly used interchangeably. In order to help stimulate bone growth and manage osteoporosis, you need to do exercise which places a strong demand or workload on the bone. This stress on the bone stimulates it to grow faster.

2. Realize the best way to do this for most people is through weight-bearing exercises. These are movements where you are bearing weight on the part of the body you are exercising. Weight-training exercises are movements done against some kind of resistance such as machines or tubing. Weight-training exercises can help to stimulate bone growth if you are using a considerable amount of weight. If you are only working with two, three or five pound weights, there is not very much stimulation on the bone–compared to the weight of your body. While that amount of weight may be appropriate for your strength-training routine, you need to make sure you are supplementing with weight-bearing exercise as well.

3. Do weight-bearing exercises for the upper body. This is important as a common area for fractures after a fall is the wrist. It is essential to keep the bones in the arms strong to help prevent this. One of the best exercises for the upper body is push-ups. You can do traditional push-ups on the floor, or you can do them standing against a wall. Another great way to do push-ups is using a small physioball. Get on the floor and place your stomach on the ball. Then keeping your elbows straight walk out until just your hips knees or ankles are on the ball. Your feet should be off the floor. The further out you roll the harder the push-up becomes. Do not let your hips drop down keep your midsection straight. Then do push-ups from there.

Tips & Warnings

• Make sure you have regular bone density tests. Osteoporosis often has no symptoms. A bone density test is the only way to know if you have it!
• Always check with your doctor before beginning any new exercise program.

Resources

• National Osteoporosis Foundation
• International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF)
• Living Well Yoga and Fitness