Weightlifting prevents osteoporosis

Davit Ghazaryan-Sargsyan
Sep 15, 2015
3 min read

What is osteoporosys?

Osteoporosis is a disease that brings to decreased bone strength and increases the risk of a broken bone.

It is the most common reason for a broken bone among the old. Bones that commonly break include the back bones, the bones of the forearm, and the hip. Until a broken bone occurs there are typically no symptoms. Bones may weaken to such a degree that a break may occur with minor stress or spontaneously. Chronic pain and a decreased ability to carry out normal activities may occur following a broken bone.

Women are affected by this disease for times as much as men. Men, of course, shouldn't feel themselves risk-free...

Our bone mass is gathered/developed during the first 25 years of our life, then, as we get older our bones begin to gradually lose important minerals. This will happen anyway, but the degree is desided by what kind of lifestyle we keep.

"We lose so much muscle as we age that by the time we're 70, we only have about 50% to 55% of our muscle mass left," says Beatrice Edwards, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine and director of the Bone Health and Osteoporosis Center at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "That explains why we feel weak and tired as we age, and we can prevent some of that with weight training."

What exercises to do?

Not every kind of weight training will improve the quality of your bones. Prefer exercises where you lift big weights. Deadlifts, squats, overhead presses are preferred as bones only increase their mass when they are under mechanical load. These exercises are advised by University of Missouri researchers.

Classic weightlifting exercises (snatch, clean and jerk) are recommended too as your body undergoes a huge load during these exercises.

Don't be afraid of weights, they will do no harm if chosen properly: try to exercise with moderate weights if you are already affected by this disease.

As your muscles grow your bones grow too and during this process they take more useful minerals. As a result they are only injured in extreme circumstances.

An example of how strong can become your bone system as a result of weight training (though this case is also a result of genetics and luck).

The man in the photo is Matthias Steiner (Weightlifting Olympic Champion of 2008).

During the 2012 Olympic competitions 432 lbs landed on his neck. After this accident (perhaps not without the God's help) he walked away as nothing had happened.

Author - unknown

Are there factors affecting bone health that can be removed?

There actually are such kind of factors: drinking alcohol and smoking, fat loosing diets when one doesn't take the needed minerals, the lack of Calcium, the lack of Vitamin D.

What should we add to our routine (in the means of eating) to help our bones weaken slower?

For making your bones stronger you should first of all try to follow our advice and do some weight trainings if possible, increase your daily Calcium intake till you get the recommended levels (1000-1500 mg), give up smoking and drinking alcohol, try to increase the levels of Testosterone if low (we'll talk on how to do that this month).

We used a paragraph from here while writting this.

Thanks for the attention.

Be healthy!