Hip Facture Prevention

Hip Fracture Prevention

Making healthy lifestyle choices in early adulthood can build a higher peak bone mass, and reduce your risk of osteoporosis in later years. These choices may lower your risk of falls and improve your overall health if you adopt them at any age. Keeping physically active helps your reflexes stay sharp and your muscles stay strong, and that can help with coordination and lower your risk of falling. If you're fit, your balance is better, and that makes you much less likely to take a fall than someone who has become bedridden and infirm.

​Aside from improving your balance and strength, exercise also has a direct impact on the strength of your bones. Bone is a living tissue. Like muscle, it weakens if you don't exercise it. By staying fit, you can make your bones stronger and less likely to break during a fall. Experts generally recommend a combination of weight-bearing exercise (like walking), resistance exercise (like lifting weights), and flexibility and balance exercises (like yoga or tai chi). However, a note of caution: always talk to your doctor before starting up an exercise routine. ​

Weight-bearing Exercises: 
These exercises include activities that make you move against gravity while staying upright. Weight-bearing exercises can be high-impact or low-impact.

​High-impact weight-bearing exercises help build bones and keep them strong. If you have broken a bone due to osteoporosis or are at risk of breaking a bone, you may need to avoid high-impact exercises. If you’re not sure, you should check with your healthcare provider.
Examples of high-impact weight-bearing exercises are:

• Dancing
• Doing high-impact aerobics
• Hiking
• Jogging/running
• Jumping Rope
• Stair climbing
• Tennis

Low-impact weight-bearing exercises can also help keep bones strong and are a safe alternative if you cannot do high-impact exercises. Examples of low-impact weight-bearing exercises are:

• Using elliptical training machines
• Doing low-impact aerobics
• Using stair-step machines
• Fast walking on a treadmill or outside

Muscle-Strengthening Exercises
​These exercises include activities where you move your body, a weight or some other resistance against gravity. They are also known as resistance exercises and include:

• Lifting weights
• Using elastic exercise bands
• Using weight machines
• Lifting your own body weight
• Functional movements, such as standing and rising up on your toes

Flexibility and Balancing Exercises 
These moves don't directly strengthen your bones. They can, though, improve your coordination, flexibility, and muscle strength. That will lower the chance that you'll fall and break a bone. You can do these every day.
Balance exercises such as Tai Chi can strengthen your leg muscles and help you stay steadier on your feet. Posture exercises can help you work against the "sloping" shoulders that can happen with osteoporosis and lower your chances of spine fractures.
Routines such as yoga and Pilates can improve strength, balance, and flexibility in people with osteoporosis. But some of the moves you do in these programs -- including forward-bending exercises -- can make you more likely to get a fracture. If you're interested in these workouts, talk to us at The Smith Clinic and we can tell you the moves that are safe and those you should avoid.

Make an appointment today for an evaluation so we can recommend the best treatment plan for you! 901-756-1650.