Today I’ll be talking about one of the most common metabolic bone diseases responsible for causing pain, functional loss, social isolation and a general decrease in qual…ity of life: osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a systematic skeleton disease which causes bone deterioration due to reduced bone density. Therefore, one with osteoporosis is highly prone to fractures. Osteoporosis is more common in women than in men due to their general lower bone mass and especially due to the onset of menopause. Dealing with osteoporosis can be a multifactorial challenge as it has detrimental effects on one’s independence, mobility and consequently psychological health. But there are several ways to combat the risk of fracture along with increasing one’s self-esteem and mood: exercise!
Exercise is a crucial intervention to combat all those nasty side effects cause by osteoporosis. Exercise along with healthy eating and some lifestyle changes can slow down the bone loss process that occurs with aging and more so with osteoporosis. And even better, exercise can significantly increase your balance, self-esteem and independence. So if you are effected by osteoporosis and are unsure whether you should be exercising, there is no need to wonder further as a vast amount of research highly supports the physical and mental health benefits of exercise for this condition.
So what kind of exercise should you be doing? Research heavily promotes weight bearing exercise for those with osteoporosis. This means that exercises that involves you being on your feet working against gravity by training with weights or using your own body weight is suitable for you. Therefore, there is a large variety of physical activity and exercise you can do to battle against osteoporosis and its side effects. Some popular choices are brisk walking, tennis, step aerobics and free weight training. Also house and garden work such as pushing a lawnmower is beneficial. It is highly recommended that to begin with you exercise with the assistance of a professional. This is because any training regime you take up needs to be tailored especially to you and a specialist can make sure you’re doing the exercises properly. Once you’ve had practice and are able to exercise on your own you will have acquired countless tools and knowledge to continue exercising independently.
I empathise with the tremendous difficulty one deals with when faced with osteoporosis. Anxiety, depression and a drop in self-esteem due to the loss of social roles are most prevalent in those suffering from osteoporosis. All of these psychological and social consequences are a challenge to bear with and there is no need for one to put up with them and suffer in silence. As discussed above, adopting exercise can combat these consequences. Also, one can benefit further from this process by having their psychological needs met while going through the first stages of adopting exercise. Though making a change won’t lead to improvements overnight, it is important to remember that there is hope (possibility for improvement) of improving your quality of life and that you can get to the stage that you feel in control of the condition and not that the condition controls you.
If you have any questions or want to discuss anything, you are more than welcome to come in and speak to us.
Eva Toro-Freund, Personal Training, Better Body Group, Sevenaoks
