Free companion to The Everyday Osteoporosis Diet Cookbook for Seniors. Three things you can do beside the kitchen counter. Nothing to buy, nothing to join, no equipment.
Bone responds to load. The cells that build it respond to being pushed on, which is why the bone in the racket arm of a lifelong tennis player is measurably denser than the bone in the other arm, and why bed rest causes rapid bone loss.
The food in the book supplies the material. Load is the instruction to use it. A person who does both gets more than a person who does either.
This card is deliberately short. It is three movements, not a program. The book it comes with is a cookbook, and it does not pretend to be an exercise manual.
Some movements are risky when the spine is fragile. Deep forward bends with a rounded back, toe touches, full sit ups and crunches, and twisting hard while holding something heavy all press on the front of the vertebrae, which is the part that gives way in a spinal fracture. Bend at the hip with a straight back instead.
And this card cannot see you. If you have had a spinal fracture, had a hip replaced, have heart disease, or are unsteady on your feet, ask for a referral to a physical therapist. In the United States, Medicare Part B covers outpatient physical therapy when it is medically necessary, and a fall or a fracture risk is a common reason for a referral. Some states let you book without a physician's referral at all.
What it does. The single most useful strength movement for an older adult. It builds the muscles that get you out of a chair, off a low toilet seat, and up off the floor if you go down.
If you cannot do it without hands yet: use a higher chair, or push off the armrests with one hand only. That is the same exercise, and it is a starting point rather than a failure.
When five gets easy: go to eight, then ten. Then hold a bag of flour against your chest.
What it does. Balance, which is what keeps a stumble from becoming a fall, and a fall is how most fractures actually start.
When it gets easy: rest one finger on the counter instead of the hand. Then hover the finger above it without touching. Never close your eyes for this one unless a physical therapist has told you to.
What it does. Weight bearing means on your feet, with your own body loading the skeleton against the ground. Walking counts. Walking uphill counts more. Swimming and cycling are excellent for the heart and do not load the skeleton this way.
Resistance training in older adults produces gains in bone density that are real and small, typically one to two percent over a year at the sites that were loaded. Set against an untreated loss of roughly one percent a year after menopause, that is the difference between going backward and standing still.
The gains in muscle and in balance are faster and larger, and they arrive within weeks rather than years. That matters more than it sounds, because the fracture you are trying to avoid usually starts with a fall rather than with a bone giving way on its own.
So do not weigh any of this against your next scan. That report is measuring something slower than both.
Print the card and put a mark in the box each time. Five out of seven is a good week. Seven out of seven is not the goal, and chasing it is how people quit in February.
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chair stands, twice | |||||||
| One-leg stand, both sides | |||||||
| Walk, with a hill |
The Kitchen Kit has the hundred recipes as printable color cards, a shopping list that builds itself from the recipes you tick, and the sheet to take to your appointment. Open the Kitchen Kit.