Raena Morgan: Hello, I’m Raena Morgan with iHealth Tube visiting with Dr. Sherill Sellman. Why is it important for woman to take up strength training for example especially when they are older?
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: Well, strength training is really important for healthy bones for women of all ages and that’s because we are actually seeing that younger women are having problems with bone loss in many cases.
Raena Morgan: Already?
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: Yes. Even teenagers are not building the bone that they should be building.
Raena Morgan: That’s scary.
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: Very critical time because of diet and lifestyle and the range of things. It is scary because you know in our teenage years we really should be laying down really strong healthy bones. And then for not doing it in our teenage or early 20s then we don’t have the kind of the bank to draw upon as we get older. So we’ll have greater and since there is a bone loss in osteoporosis down the track. So we want to build strong bones. And the reason why strength training is so important to preventing bone loss and to increase bone—I mean, you can increase your bone health and bone strength at any age.
Raena Morgan: That’s what I thought, right.
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: As long as you’re alive and you know kicking, you have the potential to increase your bone density and we of course want to increase your bone density.
Raena Morgan: That’ good news.
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: It is good news because if we have strong bones we are more mobile, we’re steadier, we’re able to live a more active life and that’s what we want. So strength training is important because by using weights or resistance training as it’s called and you increase your muscle mass and building muscle, that movement of resistance actually stimulates the bones to grow. You have to have the resistance to the bones, that’s gravity is important to stimulate the function of the bone and you know there’s a wonderful study at TUS sUniversity and they went into a nursing home, a frail nursing home residence. Some of them were in wheelchairs and they had them do very gentle strength training obviously with these residence like one pound weights, they just did it very gently but over a three-month period and they were testing all their parameters of how their body was responding and after three months these people had incredible strength, they were able to get out of their chairs, walk, take care of themselves, they found that they actually showed them improvement in their bone density. Now these average-aged residences where you know about the late 80s or early 90s—
Raena Morgan: That old.
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: They were that old and of course when you become more self-reliant you can stand up and go and get your own cup of tea. You’re happier as well. So this was a stunning study to show us that at any age even frail 80 and 90 year olds can increase their bone density, can increase their muscle mass, have increase strength, and have tremendous results and regarding their ability to increase their bone density, any age.
Raena Morgan: That would apply to man also wouldn’t they, in nursing homes, I mean certainly.
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: Absolutely! You know man generally just the Austrian seems to build you know stronger bones, so man generally have more of a going for them. The muscle mass and the bone density—bones generally are heavier in man but they have the same problem as they get older as they get more nutritionally deficient, they get more passive, plus active, they still experience a bone loss.
Raena Morgan: So what you’re saying is probably we should start early but we can create miracles starting it at any age.
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: That’s the message our body has the ability to regenerate at any age.
Raena Morgan: Okay. Well, thank you Dr. Sellman.
Dr. Sherrill Sellman: You’re welcome.
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