The best exercises for your bones

By Carolyne B. Atangaza

Your bones need to be stimulated through different activities in order to become and maintain strength. This stimulus encourages increase of its calcium content and grows denser. Exercise can help you maintain bone mass and reduce age-related bone loss. It also improves muscle strength, balance and coordination, which help to prevent falls and bone fractures.
Who needs the exercise?
According to Dr Moses Semulya, a general practitioner, since bone naturally becomes weaker with age, it is vital that people of all ages exercise. During childhood and adolescence, the bone is rapidly building density and strength. Exercise helps to maximise one’s peak bone mass. It also helps prevent poor bone health in adults.

Choosing exercises

While any form of exercise is better than no exercise at all, some exercies are better at bone strengthening than others. According experts, all exercises for bone strength should have one or more of the following attributes:

Provide resistance
Exercises such as dumbbells, elastic bands, or even strength training, rely on muscle contractions that tug on bones to stimulate them to become stronger.

Weight-bearing
Activities such as running, walking, dancing, hiking, climbing stairs, and playing tennis , force you exert to counteract gravity which stimulates bones to get stronger.

Impact driven
The higher the impact, the greater the benefit to bone. Try lifting light weights or water bottles while walking in order to increase the weight on your bones.
Other include higher-velocity exercises that involve sudden change of direction such as jogging or fast-paced aerobics soccer and squash among others.

How much exercise is enough?
Most doctors recommend weight bearing exercise for at least 30 minutes a day, three or four times a week.