Osteoporosis: How Lifting Weights Matters For Your Bones
As women get older, particularly after menopause, protecting our bone health becomes increasingly important. Osteoporosis causes bones to become weaker and more likely to break. The good news is that strength training can help maintain and improve bone strength. So, how does it work, and what do you actually need to do? How does lifting weights make your bones stronger? Your bones are living tissue, constantly breaking down old bone and replacing it with new bone. This process is called bone remodelling . When you lift weights, your muscles contract and pull on the bones they're attached to through tendons. At the same time, gravity and the weight you're lifting create additional forces through your skeleton. These forces cause your bones to bend very slightly, creating tiny amounts of strain within the bone tissue. Your bones have specialised cells called osteocytes that detect this strain and signal bone-building cells, called osteoblasts, to lay down new bone tissue. Over ti...
