Your bones are much more than passive supporting structures like the girders on a high-rise. Your body’s 206 bones are metabolically active living tissues. Even after you’ve stopped growing, your bones are constantly reconstructing themselves by resorbing old bone and forming new tissue. At any one time, about 7 percent of your body’s bone is being remodeled.
During youth, bone formation outpaces bone resorption— that’s how we grow. In our twenties and thirties, the two processes are balanced and bones are at their strongest, containing about two and a half pounds of calcium in the average adult. But beyond age forty or so, bone tissue is removed faster than it is restored; in particular, menopause accelerates the net loss of bone calcium in women. In about thirty-four million mericans, the result is osteopenia (low bone calcium), and in another ten million, the result is osteoporosis, a potentially debilitating disorder which is characterized by thin, brittle bones that tend to fracture quite easily.
You can help keep your bones strong by getting enough calcium and vitamin D in your diet and by staying away from tobacco and excessive amounts of alcohol. And exercise helps by slowing the rate of bone resorption. But to strengthen your bones, you’ll need special types of exercises, weight-bearing and/or resistance exercise (strength training,
During youth, bone formation outpaces bone resorption— that’s how we grow. In our twenties and thirties, the two processes are balanced and bones are at their strongest, containing about two and a half pounds of calcium in the average adult. But beyond age forty or so, bone tissue is removed faster than it is restored; in particular, menopause accelerates the net loss of bone calcium in women. In about thirty-four million mericans, the result is osteopenia (low bone calcium), and in another ten million, the result is osteoporosis, a potentially debilitating disorder which is characterized by thin, brittle bones that tend to fracture quite easily.
You can help keep your bones strong by getting enough calcium and vitamin D in your diet and by staying away from tobacco and excessive amounts of alcohol. And exercise helps by slowing the rate of bone resorption. But to strengthen your bones, you’ll need special types of exercises, weight-bearing and/or resistance exercise (strength training,
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