Tag Archive for: bone

How Exercise Affects Menopause: Muscle and Bone

In Tuesday’s post, we looked at how menopause affects exercise. Today and Saturday we’ll look at the reverse because exercise can have powerful effects on the changes we associate with menopause.

As a woman ages, she loses bone mineral content due to decreasing hormone levels. Her muscles change as well; fast-twitch muscle fibers become more like slow-twitch fibers. Women can’t run as fast . . .

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Broken Bones and Heel Spurs

Two questions I regularly get asked about bones: What can I do to help heal broken bones? And what can I do about heel spurs? Without question, you must see a doctor to get a diagnosis. This is something you shouldn’t self-diagnose or try to “handle” it yourself. Once you’ve done that, here’s what I would do.

For broken bones, once the bones are set and you have a cast or other immobilizing device, there are some nutrients that may help:

  • Glucosamine: 1,500 – 3,000 mg per day. Seem odd? Not . . .

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Baby Bones

If you read the message regularly, you know I frequently mention my pretend grandson Riley. He’s 18 months old and he has one speed: fast. As a result, he occasionally falls. While sometimes he does fall hard enough to hurt himself, he doesn’t break any bones as I might if I fell that often. Why not?

Most of a baby’s bones begin as cartilage. A baby has about 300 bones at birth. As they grow, their bones begin to get solid; the cartilage cells gradually become bone cells by absorbing minerals such as calcium. Some bones fuse . . .

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Why Bones Need Stress

Something unusual happened during a recent run: I fell. Nothing serious, just a few scrapes and a sprained wrist. It got me to thinking that I haven’t talked about bones in a long time; there are 206 of them in adults, and they have to last us our entire lifetime. This week’s messages are all about bones. I’ll approach it from a different way than you can find by doing an Internet search.

The critical thing to understand is that bone is live tissue. We tend to think of it as something solid, and it is. But . . .

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