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What Exercise Can A Person Do for Osteoporosis?

Osteoporosis is a bone disease that has a high risk of fracture. In addition to a supportive diet and some medications, exercise has been shown to delay the disease's effects and possibly reverse the progression.

  1. Strength/Weight Training

    • Strength exercises can be done with different modalities, such as weight machines, cables, body-weight, or free weights (kettlebells, dumbbells). This diversity of tools offers the patient and therapist options on what can be used.

    Weight-bearing Aerobics

    • Walking, jogging, and stair-climbing (not stair machines) not only helps the patient maintain cardiovascular health, but also maintain bone density in the lower body. However, there is no significant benefit for the upper body.

    Stability

    • Stability---being able to control movement while maintaining the center of gravity (CoG)---helps the patient to prevent falls. Exercises, such as single-leg reaches and uni-lateral exercises (one arm push and pull), challenges the patient's CoG.

    Functional

    • Exercises must be applicable to real-life settings. Functional training helps patients gain strength, stability, and mobility at different angles, speeds, and range of motion while maintaining the benefits of traditional strength training. Examples would be a two-arm dumbell squat, curl, and overhead press and lunging in multiple directions (front, side, turn).

    Power

    • Power training is speed added to strength training. This phase includes jump-roping, skipping, and jumping. Since this phase is riskier, the patient must be under the supervision of a health professional.

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