By Joanne Gailius
Bone health isn’t an “old person” thing. In 2020, we enjoy living longer, yet we have declining bone health worldwide. One in five women who fall and fracture will die within a year of their fall; those who survive often experience a loss of independence and reduced quality of life. Fall prevention with a focus on bone health is really important for a meaningful and fun life!
These quick facts will help you implement skills that will reduce your bone loss and support your bone building. Brace yourself!
•Get active, stay active. Bone is reactive. In order to create and rebuild strong bones, we must stress bone itself. Your bone needs to impact the ground (walk, jog, play basketball, go up and down stairs, stomp the ground!). Your muscles need to pull on your bones, creating stress on them (lift weights, pull Theraband, join a dance or exercise class, come to yoga). Post-menopausal woman often avoid these activities due to pelvic dysfunction, a common barrier to impactful exercise when there is a fear of leaking or aggravating pelvic organ prolapse (descent of your bladder, rectum or uterus). Seek out a pelvic/women’s health physiotherapist to help you with whatever challenge is stopping you from getting and staying active.
•Poking chin with your head forward and a slouched upper back posture is rampant due to sitting too much and using tech — all day, every day. We need to be aware of how we position our bodies when we are using cellphones, tablets and computers. The demands that we expose our bodies to will shape our bones and soft tissues. If we’re using tech or sitting for many of our waking hours, we owe it to ourselves to consider our posture, then change it to become bone-building.
•Quick checks: Stand, sit, perch, move and lift your screen to eye level — and learn to type without looking down at your fingers. Chin in!
•Loss of estrogen happens due to menopause, estrogen suppressing medications (as part of cancer treatment), and/or hormonal medications given as contraception or for suppressing uterine fibroids or treatment of pelvic pain. We may make these choices, but we need to learn to protect and support our bone in the meantime.
•Steroids are an amazing medication for just the right condition or moment, and no other meds will do that job. But again, steroid-induced osteoporosis is a real thing. Learn to protect your bones while you benefit from steroid medications.
•Slim is awesome, skinny is not! Being underweight and having low muscle mass as you age is highly correlated with bone loss.
•Wine and beer consumption increases your level of parathyroid hormones, which leads to a leaching of calcium from bone. Alcohol is also implicated in our bone builders (osteoblasts) getting lazy, so less new bone is laid down. Reduce your consumption and you’ll even sleep better!
•Reduce your salt. When you eat excess salt and void (pee), excess calcium joins the excess salt that you’re voiding, increasing your calcium loss.
•Phosphoric acid has been linked to lower bone density in some epidemiological (big number) studies and is found in cola-type drinks. Drink water instead.
•Smoking blocks the hormone calcitonin, an important bone-building hormone. Nicotine and free radicals generated while smoking further destroy bone builders. Stop smoking.
•Eat less sugar and/or control your diabetes for three reasons: Excess blood sugar slows down your bone builders, speeds up your bone eaters and slows healing of broken bones.
•Vitamin D deficiency. We have low sunlight in the winter and we use sunscreen/protective clothing in the summer, so many people aren’t getting enough vitamin D to support bone health. You can ask to have your levels checked by your doctor, then learn food options and/or supplementation to help bring you up to optimum vitamin D levels.
•Chronic stress and lack of sleep lead to elevated cortisol levels, which dramatically decreases bone building so that more bone tissue is broken down than gets deposited.
Take control of your bone health by building new bone and losing less bone.
Joanne Gailius, BSR, PT/OT, is a physiotherapist at Full Circle Physiotherapy, working in women’s health, oncology and pelvic physiotherapy.