#20 Proven Bone-Building Exercises for Midlife and Beyond | Professor Belinda Beck
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Mind Your Being. Whether you're a returning listener or you're new here, I'm so grateful you're taking a little time out of your day to care for your health and well-being. I'm so excited to release today's episode of Mind Your Being. I'm joined by Professor Belinda Beck, a world-leading researcher in bone health and exercise science, to talk about how our bones really respond to movement, nutrition and lifestyle as we age. We explore why it's never too late to strengthen your bones, the types of exercise that genuinely make a difference, We also discussed the groundbreaking findings showing that even postmenopausal women with osteoporosis can improve bone density with the right exercise, the right supervision and the right program.
I want to encourage you to listen to this conversation because the choices we make in midlife shape how strong, mobile and independent we feel for decades to come. If you're in midlife and wondering how to care for your body in a way that supports long-term strength and quality of life, you're going to love this episode. Please enjoy. Welcome to Mind Your Being, Belinda. Thank you for making the time today. Pleasure. Lovely to be here. I've asked you on today to talk about how exercise benefits our bones across our whole life and to talk about the findings, which were surprising to some, from your research on postmenopausal women with low to very low bone mass. But before we get into all of that, could you please tell us a bit about your background and how you came to be interested in the relationship between exercise and healthy bones?
Yeah, as many people do, I got into the area because I had sore shins when I ran. And so... That got me thinking, you know, as a very young athlete, what's going on? This doesn't make any sense. I'm very healthy and I don't understand why I've got this sore bit on my bones.
What are the benefits of exercise for bone health?
So the start of my research career was really into bone stress injuries. But that morphed into an interest into the effect of exercise on bone in general because in actual fact, Bone stress injuries tend to look after themselves. They tend to get better if you just rest them, whereas osteoporosis is something that goes the other way. You develop it as you age, typically, and once you have it, you need to do something active. to try and improve the bone mass. So it's a huge problem. It is prevalent. It is expensive. It's painful. It really impacts people's quality of life and it shortens people's life and it shortens their health span. So the number of years where they are happy and healthy. So it just became an interest just of the public health need.
And, of course, underlying everything that I do is the importance of exercise and the benefit to all our systems.
I have to admit, I'm one of those people who didn't really, I didn't know a lot about bone and I didn't think a lot about bone until I hit menopause. And then you start to really think about and hear about how important bone health is. So I think it's the public health need is really important. And to look at it from the preventative lens as well, what can we do to have that longer health span, as you said?
Yeah, that's right. Nobody thinks about their bones until they break something. They're just there. They're invisible and they do their stuff very quietly.
How can postmenopausal women improve bone density?
It's not all about just holding us up, you know, supporting us. They help us move because the muscles need things to pull on. So actually, they're really important for movement. But also, they are this reservoir of minerals and other substances that help our body function. So they're the calcium bank. We need calcium. We go to the calcium bank and make withdrawals. So it's a very metabolically active tissue, really important that we pay attention to it. And as you say, we don't tend to until we are actually at a point where we're having fractures or we're at risk of fractures.
I wish we learned more about this earlier. It's so important. In a previous episode, we had a guest, Dr. Tracey Clissold on, and she talked about the importance of building strong, healthy bones, that important window up until the age of 30.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:05–2:15
2
What are the benefits of exercise for bone health?
2:15–3:52
3
How can postmenopausal women improve bone density?
3:52–7:13
4
What groundbreaking findings were revealed in the LIFTMOR clinical trial?
7:13–34:43
5
What types of exercises are effective for building bone strength?
34:43–45:14
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Mind Your Being Podcast
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