by Anne StClair

Created on: October 19, 2008   Last Updated: December 21, 2008

Exercise is great for your health in many ways. It helps regulate your weight, keeps you fit, and it makes your bones strong. Even if you start exercising late in life, you can still build strong, healthy bones, which are essential for avoiding injury and in preventing osteoporosis. It is never too late to start exercising to strengthen your bones, because even late in life bone density has been shown to be increased by weight-bearing exercises. Osteoporosis is caused through low bone mass, which makes bones brittle and easy to fracture.

We tend to think of exercise in terms of muscles rather than bones, and we concentrate on making our muscles strong. This is of benefit of course, but muscles are attached to, and are supported by, bones, and strengthening muscles also helps strengthen the bones.

Exercise benefits bones in three ways:

1) Exercise brings fresh blood to the bones and to the tendons and ligaments attached to them.

2) Exercise brings more oxygen to the bone and surrounding tissues, and this helps to maintain the tissues and repair any damage.

3) Exercise stimulates the existing bone and encourages it to grow new bone.

There are three basic types of exercise that benefit the bones: aerobic, weight-bearing, and strength training exercises, and for strong, healthy bones a mix of these three types of workout is most beneficial. The aerobic exercises increase blood and oxygen supply to the muscles, bones and connective tissues; weight bearing exercises such as stair climbing, leg lifts, squats and push-ups use the body's own weight to strengthen the bones; and strength training workouts such as weight lifting use weights outside the body to strengthen the bones.

AEROBIC EXERCISES
Aerobic exercises increase the oxygen-rich blood supply to the bones by increasing the heart rate. Any workout that gets your heart pumping is aerobic, including running or jogging, dancing, skipping or jumping rope, and cycling. The aim of these exercises is to increase the heart rate and thus pump more blood around the body. Aerobic exercise also makes you breathe more deeply, bringing more oxygen to the body. It benefits all the tissues including all bones.

WEIGHT-BEARING EXERCISES
Weight bearing workouts help to build and strengthen the bones and slow the natural loss of bone density that occurs as we age. Weight-bearing exercises are those in which the body's own weight is used, such as climbing stairs, leg lifts or push-ups, rowing, or exercises in which weights are lifted.

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