Tips & Exercises to Prevent Osteoporosis (for 50+)

Tips & Exercises to Prevent Osteoporosis (for 50+)



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*About Will Harlow*
Will Harlow is a physiotherapist, best-selling published author and YouTube creator who specialises in helping people over the age of fifty. Will is a fully qualified physiotherapist with a Master’s degree from Brunel University in London. His credentials include a BSc and MSc. More about Will Harlow here: https://willharlow.com/

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if you're over 50 then preventing osteoporosis is vital for your health later in life and in this video I'm going to give you a five-step process for doing just that if you don't know who I am my name is Will Harlow and I'm the over 50s specialist physio here at HT Physio and Farnam and today I'm going to be giving you a five-step plan to prevent osteoporosis for over 50s now osteoporosis is a disease of the bone which is very common especially in the western world and it's categorized by loss of bone mineral density now what this means is that over time if you lose bone mineral density your bones become weaker which leaves you at higher risk of fractures and in fact osteoporosis is one of the leading causes of fracture-related injuries after people fall especially in over 50s so this diagram here should show you a little bit more about osteoporosis and in a normal normal bone you can see up here I've drawn a normal vertebra and we've got the vertebral body with these kind of cross hatch appearances because that's how bone cells are laid down they're laid down in sort of Criss crosses called trabeculae and you can see it's nice and dense in a normal vertebrae which leads to a strong bone now if you look down here this is a vertebra with osteoporosis and you can see that the trabeculae are not as dense the bone doesn't have as much mineral in it so there's less calcium and there's less collagen around there as well and as such it's weaker and it can even be prone to a fracture so it's important to note not everyone with osteoporosis will develop a fracture like this but it can happen and it doesn't always need to be a major injury to cause it I've had people with osteoporosis who have just been stepping down off a curb and they've suffered a fracture so that's in very severe cases but we want to avoid that obviously if we can so what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you a little bit about who's at risk from osteoporosis and I'm going to give you my five steps to prevent this from happening and show you some exercises at the end so in terms of who's at risk the research shows us a couple of of different things the first thing it shows us is that females tend to be at greater risk of osteoporosis than men and we think that this is to do with the menopause as there's less estrogen in the system for women as they cross postmenopausal age bone mineral density can drop and this can be one of the major factors that leads to osteoporosis another risk factor for osteoporosis is age it's just much more common in people over the age of 50 and as people get to 70s and their 80s that becomes higher and higher still so it's important for people of an older generation to get screened by dexascan for osteoporosis even if they don't have a family history another risk factor for osteoporosis is a past history of poor diet or an inability to draw nutrients from your food people who've had a BMI of less than 19 are also at higher risk and a BMI is your body mass index so that's a calculation based on your weight and your height typically people with a BMI of under 19 are underweight which means that they aren't necessarily getting nutrients properly from their food genetics are another risk factor and a past history of osteoporosis in the family can leave you at risk it's also been shown that people who have a family history of hip fractures are more at risk and we think that's just because hip fractures are very common in osteoporosis or if a parent has had a hip fracture it does make sense to get screened the other risk factors include a long history of oral steroid use like corticosteroids such as prednisolone and finally men are not safe from this men who have low testosterone are particularly at risk as well so that's osteoporosis and who's at risk let's talk about five things you can do to mitigate the risk of osteoporosis so that you can maintain your health in your 50s and Beyond so the first thing that's very very important for preventing osteoporosis is to ensure an adequate calcium intake now calcium is one of the key bone minerals which we have in our bodies which helps to contribute to the strength of our bones and to the growth of new bone cells if we're deficient in calcium that is a risk factor for osteoporosis now you can increase your calcium intake through foods such as dairy products like milk and like cheese meat also contains Calcium as well and you can find it in various vegetables too it's all about choosing what works best for you when you're building your diet but it's worth looking at the labels of the foods you buy tracking how much calcium you're actually taking in using an app like MyFitnessPal and then benchmarking that against what the government recommends you should have because if you're shooting underneath that then you are going to be leaving yourself at risk the second tip for preventing osteoporosis is to ensure you have adequate vitamin D levels now vitamin D is actually closer to a hormone than it is a vitamin and it's something that is created by our bodies in response to the sunlight the skin actually creates vitamin D we can also take it in in small quantities from our diet as well but vitamin D is a vital component for bone mineral density is something that your body uses to again create new bone and to strengthen existing bone and many people in the Western World particularly Us in the UK are deficient in vitamin D so getting a simple blood test to check it is more than worthwhile if you're low on vitamin D for example because you live somewhere cold and you don't get much sunlight or because you're older and your skin is not as efficient at turning sunlight into Vitamin D then a supplement can really help so have a look at your vitamin D levels your doctor is usually happy to check this kind of thing out for you and then supplement if necessary the third thing you can do to prevent osteoporosis is to ensure you're getting your 10 000 steps now walking and weight-bearing exercise has been shown to be fantastic at preventing osteoporosis later on in the video I'm going to give you some specific exercises for it but right now walking is what we're talking about and that is just as important the more walking you do the more you send a signal to your body that you need your bones for function and the less likely it is that your body will start to erode your bone mineral density we find that people who are forced into bed rest or people who sit in a chair tend to have an accelerated rate of bone mineral loss and that's because they're not sending a signal to their weight-bearing bones that they're still needed and because bones are quite an expensive tissue for the body to maintain the body says well we don't need these bones anymore so let's start taking Parts away so we can make the body more efficient that's not very helpful for us in preventing osteoporosis so the best thing you can do is to keep sending those signals try and get your 10 000 steps every day do that however you like it doesn't need to be one long walk in a row it can be a few separate walks but if you're just generally active you might find you tick off 10 000 steps anyway but however you get it keep trying to hit a decent number of steps it's worth also noticing that 10 000 is just an arbitrary number it doesn't have to be that many but do as much as you feel you comfortably can and that will be one of the best things you can do for keeping your bone mineral density the fourth thing you can do to prevent osteoporosis is to avoid excessive drinking and to stop smoking both of these things have been shown to be risk factors for osteoporosis heavy drinkers have a higher rate of osteoporosis as do smokers and it's just because these chemicals interfere with the way the body lays down new bone so unfortunately people who smoke do have a higher risk factor so stopping completely is the best way and if you drink more than two glasses of alcohol per night unfortunately you will also have a higher risk factor for osteoporosis so try and keep your drinking in moderation and stop smoking for the best possible chance now for the fifth step of preventing osteoporosis I'm going to give you a couple of different exercises to try these are weight-bearing exercises you can do them anytime you don't need to do all of them you can just pick and choose and only do the ones that feel pain-free and only do these if they're suitable for you personally not all of these are going to be suitable for everyone so let's have a look at these exercises quickly and you can add them to your routine so now I'm going to show you a couple of exercises that you can use to prevent osteoporosis these exercises are a weight-bearing exercises which means that they not only send a signal to the weight-bearing muscles but they also send a signal to the weight-bearing bones to remain strong and to lay down new tissue so they're all done on your feet and that's vital for osteoporosis exercises they should be weight bearing so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to do a simple variant of the squat and the squat is such a good exercise because it works multiple joints and multiple muscle groups so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to take two hands together like this just to provide some counterbalance and you're going to squat down only to the point of comfort and then come back up and you can see here that when I do the squat it's both my knees and my hips that are moving okay my back stays quite straight and it's my knees and my hips that are bending so to see that from the side that's kind of like this so my hips go back my knees come over my toes and I'm going down nice and controlled and slow now it really doesn't matter how far you go down if you have some knee issues or you have some pain in your hip you can still get benefit from doing the smallest squats you probably just need to do some more of them and if you have problems with your balance you can easily do squats with a chair to hold on to so I'd have two hands on like this and I'd recommend doing this if you're just getting started because in case you you lose your balance or if you wobble at the bottom you can push back up using the chair okay so that's just the safety but if you're happy doing it without then feel free to do it without so that's the first thing the squat is nice and easy you just want to keep doing it until you get a bit of a working ache in the muscles around the legs and do that a couple of times a day an alternative to the squat would be the lunge and I quite like the lunge because not only does it work similar muscles to the squats or your quads and your glutes but it also works one leg at a time which is uh perfect for training balance at the pelvis so I'll show you a lunge we'll start with a mini lunge and then we'll build up so a mini lunge looks something like this so you step forward and then you come back like this and then you can swap so you go down and back up and when you see people do lunges in the gym you often see them taking their knee right down to the floor you don't need to do that for for um to get some benefit you can if you feel you're able to which would look something like that and obviously you get more of the muscle fibers working but if you are over 50 and you feel that that's a little bit Out Of Reach at the moment just doing small lunges like this is more than enough I'll show you from another Angle now so from the side a lunge kind of looks like this a small lunge and we're trying to work it in a way that not taking it too slow but we're doing it in a controlled way and really we're going for a number of repetitions most people will shoot for 10 to 15 of these in a row and you just want to keep it light and easy if you feel you can go a bit deeper you can do a lunge like this but don't get your knee in contact with the floor so stop shy of that and if you lack the control to do that then just stick with shallow lunges instead now another one that works really well is the wall squat this is similar to the standing squat but we're going to use a wall so you stand with your feet probably about a foot away from the wall you're back against the wall like this and your bottom supported too and you're just going to slide down like this not using your hands keeping your hands away and then come back up and I recommend for most people they don't go any deeper than 90 when they do the wall squat because if you go really deep sometimes you can't get back up again so just don't get stuck when you do it just go down to a comfortable level you can hold there you'll feel these muscles kicking in and then bring yourself back up and again you can do 10 or 15 in of those in a row until you get a working ache in your quads and then the final thing we're going to do which can help to prevent osteoporosis is the calf raise and this is an exercise for these muscles down here the calf muscles and it makes them stronger and it also sends a signal to the bones in the lower leg to stay nice and strong so for the calf raise you can use a wall or you can use a worktop you put your hands on something just for balance and then you're just going to bring your body weight forward and up onto your toes as high as you can and then slowly back down so I'll show you again we're going up squeeze at the top and then slowly down so up squeeze at the top and then slowly back down like this and we're just going to keep going until the calves at the back feel tired so that's a four-step exercise plan to prevent osteoporosis it's not just osteoporosis prevention with those exercises you'll also get muscle strength and muscle mass growth as well if you do them consistently so give those a try if it's safe for you to do so and see how you get on so that's my five step plan for preventing osteoporosis I hope you found this video informative and useful if you have please leave a comment below and subscribe to the channel for more from me and if you want to get more from me personally then please do feel free to pick up a copy of my book it's called thriving Beyond 50 and you can find it on Amazon using the link below anyway thank you for watching and I look forward to speaking to you on the next video

#Tips #Exercises #Prevent #Osteoporosis

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