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Osteoporosis is a huge concern with myself and my mother. What is the best prevention for my teenage daughter?
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Bone density experts are actually finding that your "dense bone retirement fund" can be started as early as eight years old. While treatment of osteoporosis is quite a bit more intricate an exercise process, prevention is quite simple. The science behind bone mineral density has found that jumping is the key! Of course, proper nutrition is a must to ensure the obvious calcium needs. My expertise is the exercise side of it!
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The great breakthrough in prevention to me is the jumping. Studies are finding that activity alone is not the best medicine on the physical side of the things. Several activities like yoga, swimming, or cycling would not give you the overload needed for building strong bones. Strength training has been the latest and greatest modality but that is still in the treatment realm. It's the ballistic loading of the muscles in the take offs and specifically the landings during jumping that stimulate the bones!
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Don't get me wrong! The research in bone density for older adults is exciting. It's just that getting our younger generation to jump during this awesome window of opportunity to build is huge! It has become such a problem in our older generations that, because of all the research, we now know how easy it is to prevent. Convincing a 10 year old to do a certain prescribed sequence of jumping drills for better bone density 60 years from now is silly. The even greater exercise in futility would be doing the same thing for a 17 year old indestructable teenager! It is the responsibility of parents and teachers to find innovative ways to keep kids and teenagers jumping. Volleyball, basketball, hopscotch, jumping rope... Jumping up and down only 5 times / three days per week before age 25 could take the place of decades of treatment later on. Now we just have to sell it to her! Keep it fun!
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