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Thickening the trabeculae versus increasing the trabecular number

Posted by WilWeten @wilweten, Jul 7 2:52am

I'm interested in how to improve the quality/strength of specifically my trabecular bones.
I read at: "several reports have shown that jumping increases the trabecular bone mass by thickening the trabeculae, whereas treadmill running and swimming add to the trabecular bone mass by increasing the trabecular number, rather than the thickness. "

I 'm completely new to this subject. Does this mean for people with severe osteoporosis (T-value of -3.9) that it would be best or safest to first work on the trabecular number before working on thickening the trabeculae?

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kfhoz | @kfhoz | Jul 15 11:18am
In reply to @wilweten "@gently Thanks for your comment. I agree: "Both impact exercise and resistance lifting can be destructive..." + (show)
Profile picture for WilWeten @wilweten

@gently Thanks for your comment.
I agree: "Both impact exercise and resistance lifting can be destructive to remaining bone." Yesterday, I spoke to a physiotherapist and he said more or less the same. I showed him the pictures of my Dexa and VFA scan and he said that because of my several vertebral compression fractures we would have to be careful when designing a program to improve my bone health and there's always a risk of a next fracture.

I asked him about specific exercises for the thickening of trabecular bones versus increasing the trabecular number, but he avoided my question and said that in next session, we would explore my possibilities for safely exercising.

My exercise of the last few months has been walking twice a day for 30-45 minutes with Nordic walking poles with a for me more or less natural speed of 2 miles an hour. I got the impression the physio thought that heavier shocks to my hips and vertebrae were needed to actually help build stronger bones.

In the mean time, I found this article: Bone Health and Physical Activity - The Complex Mechanism at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12539549/

It says e.g. "This article discusses matters concerning the mechanism of physical activity affecting bone tissue and factors modifying its response to mechanical loads, the knowledge of which may be of importance in the prevention of bone fractures associated with heavy training loads or osteoporotic changes."

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@wilweten "Complex" in the title of that article really crowns this whole osteoporosis challenge for us all 🙂

I read/partially-skimmed the whole article, and had an AI summarize in layman's terms. It goes beyond exercise discussing evaluating other factors that can affect the results on bone health when one does exercise. It confirms that one must exercise for bone health and "... it may be necessary to individualise the selection of exercises in terms of their efficiency and also safety. ..."

The Personal Trainer that I am working with has no possibility of handling this complexity. I suspect that once one includes the exercise part of the OP/bone-health equation only a limited number of specialists such as Margaret Martin of Melio Guide, Dr. Doug Harris & team, DC Keith McCormick, etc can cover this ground. So I will keep on trying to learn and stay motivated. Off to the gym now.

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