Anti-Fragility Training
Strong muscles, strong bones! Exercise regenerates your muscles and your bones! So next time you tie up your workout shoes, think “g force.”
Bones should be jarred, for their own good. Research shows that subjecting bones to abrupt stress prompts them to add mass or at least reduces their loss of mass that comes with aging. Try to get at least 4.2 G’s. You can do this by running a 10-minute mile or jumping up onto and down from a box at least 15 inches high. If that seems too ambitious for you, try jump-roping or hopping in place for 30 seconds each day.
Today’s podcast guest, Dr. Susan Bloomfield is one of the nation’s leading bone researchers. In our conversation, she discusses how her NASA research helped solve the everyday issues of thinning bones.
A recent study shows that people who jump 10 to 20 times twice a day improved their hip bone-mineral density after 16 weeks better than a control group.
The catch is that you need a 30-second rest in between each jump. That’s because bone becomes desensitized with repeated stress, and bones don’t have the opportunity to strengthen and rebuild. If you wait 30 seconds, your bones don’t adapt to the stress from exercise which gives you better results when it comes to bone mass.
Here are three of my biggest takeaways from the conversation with Dr. Bloomfield…
• It’s easier to take steps to prevent osteopenia or osteoporosis than to reverse it. It’s important to get enough calcium from spinach, broccoli, dairy products, dried beans and salmon. And don’t forget the vitamin D…this is a must!
• Your body is constantly breaking down old bone and rebuilding it, also called remodeling. Peak bone mass happens when you have the most bone you’ll ever have, which is usually in your early to mid 30s. At a certain age, the bone remodeling process happens at a lower rate. The slow down leads to a drop in the amount of bone you have. When bone loss becomes severe, you have osteoporosis.
• Exercise regenerates your muscles…and your bones!
