Your Health: Improving Your Bone Health

Improving Your Bone Health
Brittany Polzin, Fitness/Corporate Wellness Intern

Osteoporosis is a silent yet vicious disease that affects mostly women. Unfortunately, there are no symptoms of this disease until you fracture a bone. Therefore, it is important to test for this disease as well as increase your awareness of the many risk factors for osteoporosis.

Risk factors for osteoporosis include:

1. Smoking
2. Physical inactivity
3. Caucasian or Asian
4. High stress levels
5. Family history or poor bone health
6. Had a hysterectomy
7. Taking certain prescription drugs
8. High intake of caffeine
9. Low calcium consumption
10. Low waist to hip ratio
11. High alcohol consumption
12. Experiencing a change in your monthly cycles during pre-menopause and menopause

As you may know, exercise is a very important ingredient for living a long and essential life. There are many exercises that can be done to improve your bone health! For starters, according to USDA, it is important for adults to exercise at least 30 minutes every day, or most days. For children, it is important to exercise at least 60 minutes every day, or most days. Also, it is recommended to incorporate weight resistance training in your exercise routine in order to build strong muscles and to support your bone maintenance. If you have children, this could be a great opportunity for all of you to exercise together!

A few examples of exercises you can do to improve your bone health include: weight lifting, stair climbing, gymnastics, gardening, jogging, race walking, tennis, dancing (especially tap dancing, contra dancing, polka, and other dances that involve hopping and stomping), aerobics, step aerobics, jumping rope, jumping jacks, and/or cycling (when increasing the resistance). This variety of exercises will never leave you bored.

Start improving your bone health today, and prevent osteoporosis from heading your way!