Weight-Bearing Exercise Builds Bone

It has been known for a longtime that weight-bearing exercise builds strong bones. This is because this type of exercise stresses your bones, which in turn promotes growth. Astronauts in outer space for long periods of time have been shown to suffer from bone loss because absolutely no stress is placed on their bones in the weightlessness of space. Logically, in a similar fashion, people who ride around stores in motorized chairs are NOT just taking it easy, but are actively promoting bone loss as well as weakening their leg muscles.

Building Strong Bones

Regularly engaging in walking and in other forms of weight-bearing exercise is vital for your long term health, as well as for a high quality of life in your retirement years. Nor, do females get a free pass to avoid routine physical exercise, especially physical exertion, in the real world of natural health.

Furthermore, the notion that you must supplement with calcium is a common misconception. Your body actually needs supplementation with both calcium and magnesium. Running the numbers, will show you that you would have to consume 4,000 calories a day before you would be able to obtain adequate amounts of both calcium and magnesium from diet alone.

In health research on vitamins and nutritional supplements, if the researchers ask the wrong question a negative finding does NOT prove that the supplement under study is ineffective. All it shows is that they have asked the wrong question. This is exactly what happened in a recent study that reportedly showed that Vitamin D supplementation of 800 IUs a day in men along with a calcium supplement was ineffective at preventing bone loss.

Using weight-bearing exercise to build strong bones.

Every one of us is different in regards to how we would respond to supplementation with 800 IUs of vitamin D. In Vitamin D therapy has gone mainstream, several health researchers in Vitamin D are convinced that you have to measure blood levels of Vitamin D due to widespread variability in how people respond to supplementation. Further, the amount of Vitamin D required on a daily basis to prevent bone lost is absolutely huge, according to them, and would require supplementation on average with between 2,600 and 4,000 IUs a day.

Furthermore, this study was likewise fatally defective because the test subjects did NOT supplement with magnesium.

References:

• Independent and combined effects of calcium-vitamin d3 and exercise on bone structure and strength in older men: an 18-month factorial design randomized controlled trial.
  Kukuljan S, Nowson CA, Sanders KM, ...
  J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2011 Apr;96(4):955-63. Epub 2011 Jan 5.
  PMID: 21209030