The advice most people are given after an osteoporosis diagnosis is to stay active and go for walks. It is well meant, and as a stimulus for bone it is close to useless.
That is worth saying plainly, because the alternative is not more walking. It is different exercise.
Bone adapts to load, and only to enough of it
Bone is living tissue that responds to mechanical stress by getting stronger, in the same way muscle does. The catch is the threshold: the load has to be meaningfully greater than what the bone is used to. Walking on flat ground is what your skeleton already does every day, so it changes very little.
What does change bone density is progressive resistance training at real intensity, and impact loading. Both need to be prescribed rather than guessed at, which is the entire reason this is a clinical service and not a gym membership.
What we do differently
Our exercise physiologists prescribe osteoporosis programs that load bone hard enough to matter while avoiding the movements that carry fracture risk. Loaded spinal flexion — sit-ups, toe touches with weight, crunches — is the obvious example, and it appears in an enormous number of generic programs.
Falls are the other half of the problem
Reduced bone density only becomes a fracture when something knocks you over. Balance and lower limb strength are therefore as important as bone density itself, and they improve considerably faster — you will notice steadiness long before any scan shows a change.
Our clinical classes and the Fit Over 50 class in our performance classes cover exactly this, in groups small enough to be supervised properly.
How long before anything changes
Bone is slow. Programs run in six to twelve month terms, and a change in bone density is measured in small percentages. Strength and balance improve within weeks, which matters, because those are what prevent the fall.
Who should be asking about this
Anyone post-menopause, anyone who has had a fracture from a fall that should not have caused one, anyone on long-term corticosteroids, and anyone whose bone density scan came back with a number and no plan attached to it.
Bring the scan result. It changes what we prescribe.
Forge West End is at Unit 4, 249 Montague Road, West End. Book online or call 07 3844 0686 — we are open from 6am Monday to Friday.