Every 17 Seconds

On National Health Bones Week, Lisa Weis from Barbelles helps us take a look at the issue of osteoporosis in women over 60, and how it can be managed, treated and battled.  

Every 17 seconds a person in Australia is told that she or he has osteoporosis or is at high risk of developing osteoporosis.  For post-menopausal women that is one in three women.  For men over 50 it is one in eight.
The statistics get worse.  One in four women who break their hip will die in the first 12 months from breaking that hip. The risk of a woman dying from a hip fracture is equal to that of dying from breast cancer and four times greater than that of dying from endometrial cancer.

But thankfully it is not all bad news.

Unlike other diseases such as cancer, osteoporosis is completely preventable, and if you are osteoporotic, you can reverse it.  You no longer have to accept that osteoporosis is a “normal component” of ageing, that ruins the active lives of more than half of all women over 50 years of age and nearly as many men over 70 years!  The purpose of this article is to unmask the bone robbers and to provide guidelines on how to prevent or reverse osteoporosis through exercise.

But firstly, what is osteoporosis?  In the most simplest terms it means that your bone is losing bone mass – until there is little to no bone left.  Instead of your bone looking like a healthy block of cheese, it starts to resemble something like swiss cheese, making it very easy to fracture.  There is a period in our life where we have peak bone mass and from that day forward, we start to lose bone.  The body is very good at generating and building new bone, but for some of us, we lose more than what we can build.  This period in our life is around about when we are 30 years old.  Once we are past this age, we are very susceptible to the disease of osteoporosis or what is known as “at high risk”.

But how does one go about building bone?  What stimulates the growth of bone?

Research states that weight-bearing exercise is a great way to build bone.  But we are not talking about a regular gym program.  Bicep curling, doing leg presses sitting in a machine or doing “3 sets of 10” will not build bone.  It can’t because what you are doing is not stressing neither bone nor muscle.

Whether you are in your 40s, 50s, 60s or 70s, you need to exercise like you are 30 again.  You need to learn how to lift weights on your own two feet – this is what weight-bearing means.  No machines are allowed!

You need to lift weight, pull weight and squat weight like you are in your 30s and not in your 60s.  You need to regain full use of your joints so you can become stronger, agile and more flexible.

Believe it or not, you need to overload muscles in your hip and lower back area with a force up to and in excess of your own body weight.  This must sound absolutely mythical, but it is easily being accomplished in women and men of all ages, even in their 60s.

You need to find yourself a good Personal Trainer or Strength and Conditioning Coach to show you how to increase your training volume over a period of time.  Training volume is important to the development of lean body mass, increasing bone density and lowering body fat.  A qualified and reputable Personal Trainer or Strength and Conditioning Coach will ensure your program includes variation in training and volume which is essential for optimal gains in strength, and ultimately gains in bone.

Here are some results of a woman with osteoporosis.  Her training volume equates to about 2 tonne of load moved each week and she completes this in under 75 repititions.

• After one cycle of bone (8 months) she was able to go from being at high risk to low risk.
• After a bone density scan where previous results had shown bone mass decreases of up to 9.3%, she achieved a result showing increases of up to 5.8% – and rising!

All it took was engaging a qualified and reputable Strength and Conditioning Coach and training just twice a week.