The secret to strong bones is only a few steps away
When someone says “hip fracture,” most people conjure up the image of an older woman lying on the floor after having fallen.
If you’re an older man, you might want to adjust that mental image a bit by inserting yourself into that scenario—especially if you’re not very active.
A recent study out of Sweden confirms what I’ve been telling you and my patients all along: You’ve got to move. The researchers started with a group of 2,205 men between the ages of 49 and 51 and followed them for 35 years. They were initially interviewed and examined, and then again at ages 60, 70, 77 and 82.
Each interview consisted of the same questions regarding typical habits, such as watching television, walking, and level of participation in sports.
In addition to being interviewed, participants had to perform exercise tests and submit to muscle biopsies. Through these methods, it was confirmed that there was a greater level of fitness in those men who exercised. No surprise there. But the researchers also found that those who didn’t exercise suffered a greater risk for broken bones.
In fact, the sedentary men were over 1½ times more likely to suffer a broken bone and over 2½ times more likely to break a hip. And for those men who worked to increase their level of exercise, their efforts were rewarded handsomely: Their number of fractures went down in relation to their level of increase.
Researchers attribute the decreased fractures to the increased muscle strength that comes from exercise, which also promotes balance.
This is an especially important study that leads me to a very important statistic: One in four people who suffer a hip fracture die within one year. There’s a lot more to talk about in relation to bones than I have space for here, but suffice it to say I will be covering the topic in-depth in the August issue of my newsletter Health Revelations.
I recommend that you begin moving, starting from wherever you are in your current state of activity (or inactivity) and working from there. You’re not going to change overnight, so look at it as a positive lifestyle change that will take some time to implement.
And then replace that dreaded image of you on the floor holding your hip with one of you enjoying a nice long walk or even a game with the grandkids in the yard.
