Stop Doing these Exercises IMMEDIATELY If you Have Osteoporosis

Transcript

all right today I want to talk about the worst exercises for osteoporosis we are spreading the word that exercise is critical for reversing osteoporosis however if you go on YouTube and search this topic you will see endless resources discussing their opinion now these are mostly physical therapist and trainers and that's not a bad thing however they're so contradictory who do you believe well I was a personal trainer before I went to med school and I even did a semester of physical therapy school before I went to medical school so does that mean you should trust me maybe maybe not you get to decide that but we are in the middle of creating a new exercise program for our patients and our Osteo Collective members so this stuff really is top of mind and as you probably know we work with exercise physiologist and phds and we are really looking deeply into what type of exercise is safe to do and I should use quotes when I say that uh because we never really know what's safe we can only guess take our best guess with the information that we have so when it comes to this content online remember that many of these speakers want to help you prevent fracture and I do too but remember that preventing fracture in reversing osteoporosis are not the same goal so I want both for you but you can definitely air on the side of being too conservative and prevent fracture at the risk of not improving bone quality and quantity they really are two different goals and two different questions so one question might be actually exercises to avoid to prevent fracture but the other one is exercises to avoid because they don't build bone so I'm going to break this down and we're going to talk about the quote unquote worst exercises for osteoporosis hey I'm curious what are the top exercises you avoid to prevent fracture I'd love to hear your thoughts leave us a comment on YouTube now you've probably heard me talk about the importance of resistance training and impact you've maybe seen my interview with Dr Belinda back on the lift trial on oniro and there are many opinions out there on the best exercise for bone health but in summary they all have to do with resistance training and impact there's no question there but today I want to tell you about what not to do when it comes to exercise but do it through the lens of someone who is trying to reverse bone loss and again I think you'll find some of these things are similar to things you've heard but I also want to bring up some some contradictory statements that I've seen in a lot of the videos online all right so number one let's talk about forward bending so you've seen probably a lot of therapists and trainers they'll say that you don't want to bend your back forward like this because it puts pressure on the front of the spine and that can cause a fracture and that is true however if you think about some of the exercises that they're saying not to do they're saying don't bend over and stretch your hamstrings they're saying you know don't lean forward by bending forward don't do things like certain yoga pose is and you can get really really granular with this the problem is is that a lot of these things are just simple lifestyle things we we really kind of have to bend over at some point and so while I agree that if someone is at very high risk of fracture they're having fractures we do have to be very careful we have to understand that when it comes to training we have to start stressing things and do it in a way that is going to reduce the risk as great we can so I'm going to agree we shouldn't be bending forward we shouldn't be doing you know loaded situps that kind of stuff because the more we compress the spine and fire our muscles the more we do put ourselves at risk but you've also heard me probably talk about doing something like a deadlift well oh my gosh aren't we bending forward to do a deadlift in fact aren't we trying to lift multiple times our body weight doing a deadlift well maybe don't do that uh but what we are trying to do with a deadlift is actually to keep our spine straight so this is really really important I actually had just uh somebody who um they reached out to me I forget which platform and they said oh I was I was doing a deadlift and I think I I fractured my spine I was like oh my gosh I'm so sorry but it makes me wonder about your form right because if you're doing a deadlift you really should be keeping your shoulders back your back straight as you go down you're really not bending forward much at the spine and so we really have to be cognizant of what we're doing to the spine when we're doing exercises especially like a deadlift um I think that people could get themselves into trouble with forward bending this is one of those areas where we do have to be careful but there are so many simple things like should we never stretch our hamstrings again no there are other ways to stretch your hamstrings though other than just bending straight forward so we do need to do all the things that we need to do we need to do the resistance training and I do like a deadlift as an exercise but it has to be done with the right form so so many times when and when you think that you're going to to bend your back forward if you just bend at the hips and keep your back straight you're still loading your spine some but you're not hunched forward so there's a big difference between loading your spine with your hips bent versus loading your spine with a hunched back as far as the forces through those U vertebral bodies of the spine so just keep that in mind when it comes to forward bending it might not be as dangerous as some people online are saying but the same time this is something to keep in mind now the same thing here with number two so number two I'm going to say is twisting motion so let's just give for example like the old Russian twist situp right this is actually bending and twisting at the same time there's also a lot of yoga poses and pilates um movements that are going to put you in similar twisting positions I get a lot of Kickback when I say that yoga and pilates aren't good for bone it's not that they're not good for health they just don't build bone they are good for core strength and Mobility there's lots of value in yoga and pilates but I would encourage you to use like a group class with an instructor that has some training in osteoporosis with other people with osteoporosis in the cloud so you don't get into a situation where you're in over your head and you're you feel like you have to do something that is uncomfortable I also don't think that twisting is really required for building bones think about all the exercises that we do they're Push Pull with relatively neutral uh body position overall so so I don't think we really need to be twisting from a bone perspective but again from a health span perspective we probably want to maintain that motion right and so then that gets into like the sport side of twisting so what about sports like golf what about sports like tennis you know these are sports that require a lot of twisting especially if you're playing very aggressively right so some people would say man if I have osteoporosis I can't play golf because of that follow through and if you just watch me do that on YouTube and you're a golfer I apologize I'm not a golfer um but golf tennis lots of twisting do we have to stop playing those things it really depends on your bone you know if you haven't had a fracture and you're lifting heavy and you've got good mobility and you're headed in the right direction then maybe not but it's really hard to say because those Dynamic movements can impart a lot of force to the spine so this is where it gets really really difficult to make recommendations so this is where we you know looking at starting points understanding bone turnover markers all of that's really helpful all right before I get to the next section if you haven't been to our bone health master class yet and this is all ringing true but causing questions for you please join our Master Class it's absolutely free you can sign up on YouTube and you can hear us go through the myths and misconceptions around osteoporosis provide you with some resources to help build out your own program it's been I think found valuable by thousands and thousands of people so I look forward to seeing you in the master class all right now the next one is spine extension now I actually got this from Dr Nick trouy who is the exercise physiologist that we partner with with and he threw this one in here not because it's necessarily going to break your bones but because he feels like it is just not a good exercise for people with osteoporosis or arthritis or back pain because if you think about what you're doing with this exercise like the Superman spine extension exercise if you think about what you're doing you're really loading all those little joints in the spine you're loading them with the muscles and then you're putting them at an extreme range of motion and that actually is not very good for those joints not to say that we shouldn't work on range of motion so if you think about that Superman you're Fighting Gravity you're pushing those joints together but you could also do that just flip over and roll on a foam roller nice and passively and you're not going to be firing the muscles pulling those joints together you can actually let them separate and work on range of motion um and so doing it in a different way you can actually achieve the goal which is generally going to be back Mobility range of motion Etc so more passive extension stretching that direction rather than doing something like uh a forced hyperextension exercise there all right number four chronic cardio now you guys have probably heard me talk about this when I describe chronic cardio it can really be any form of cardio right so it could be any any sport from swimming to running to cycling um or rowing depending on how you're doing it what I find that's really concerning about these exercises is not that they're not good for you again all these things have potential value swimming we know because it is in the water because it's in anti-gravity environment um it is strongly associated with uh low bone mass it's just a fact and so we know swimmers will generally have lower bone mass running is a little bit confusing because it seems like there would be a lot of impact there right so if you're a runner it's bang there's impact but it's not very much impact and generally the better at running you get the less impact you have in your strike actually so a lot of people are midfoot striking they have shorter strides they're actually letting their foot absorb the shock so they're really not getting much impact and then you run into the issue of if you are putting a lot of miles on your body your body is going to want to accommodate to that by being lighter it's going to actually unload bone because it needs a lighter frame to do that so that just kind of makes sense um cycling is a little bit of an in between so there's no impact it is great from a cardiovascular perspective but you're not generating enough force on the muscles to bend the bones so you're not going to see an improvement in bone there with all three of those things you could potentially run into issues from a diet perspective so Runners also tend to notoriously under fuel cyclist kind of the same thing depending on the group that you're in uh swimmers slightly different Community um but we see that people that get wrapped into these Sports in a very heavy way which is again not necessarily bad but we have to watch how much they're eating how much energy how much protein and how much output are they putting out because these things really could actually get in the way of building bone all right so that's it those are the worst exercises to avoid for osteoporosis from my perspective so as you watch videos on this topic by other people in the space of bone health on YouTube or wherever please ask yourself this question and this is the most important part ask yourself is this content designed to prevent me from fracturing or is this content designed to help me safely improve my bone I would argue It's usually the former not so often the latter all right so if you like this consider these videos this is the three things to do immediately after you're diagnosed with osteoporosis and this one is the top three foods for osteoporosis remember that a diagnosis of osteoporosis is not the end but deciding to reverse it is a beginning I'll see in the next video