Straighten Up and Weight Bear Right

Bone resembles a honeycomb in its internal structure, and it’s this honeycomb design that gives bone it’s strength.  In somebody with Osteoporosis the holes in the comb become larger and the bone forming the comb pattern becomes thinner.

As many are aware, putting weight through your bones makes them stronger; hence weight bearing exercises have become the gold standard in osteoporosis prevention and maintenance.  However, due to poor posture many people actually put less weight through their bones than they should and more through their soft tissues.  This poor posture tends to worsen as osteoporosis progresses unless a conscious effort is made to counteract it.  At the very least if you are going to do weight bearing exercises doesn’t it make sense that you actually load the bones and not the soft tissues?  It makes even more sense that if you spend most of your day sitting, standing and walking that you should maximize the weight you put through your bones during these activities as well.
You might think that correcting your posture is as easy as standing in front of a mirror and simply re-positioning everything until it looks “right”…..practice makes perfect doesn’t it?  Not always.  Due to things like scar tissue, joint stiffness, cranial restrictions and dysfunction of internal organs it may be impossible to maintain your new position for very long….if at all.  Sometimes you need some help relieving tension in your tissues.  Once the restrictions to good posture have been relieved you will be surprised at how much easier it is to stand tall and aligned.  Happy weight bearing!

One final note…..don’t forget to eat your prunes!  A new study just published in September of this year confirmed that eating 100g of prunes per day, in combination with your prescribed Calcium and Vitamin D, can actually IMPROVE bone mineral density!
(Shirin Hooshmand, Sheau C. Chai, Raz L. Saadat, Mark E. Payton, Kenneth Brummel-Smith and Bahram H. Arjmandi (2011). Comparative effects of dried plum and dried apple on bone in postmenopausal women. British Journal of Nutrition, 106 , pp 923-930 doi:10.1017/S000711451100119X)