Hip fractures are considered the "beginning of the end" for the elderly. Why? Physically and emotionally, this event is a terrible blow. An elderly person loses their balance and falls. And their hip breaks. Surgery is immediate, with the long time spent under anesthesia. Not good for an older person, as their metabolism is slower and there is a possibility of brain damage, depending on their former lifestyle. But I am not writing this article for older people! I am writing it for you, the younger person who wants to keep bones strong in a well muscled body. Maybe you are over forty or over fifty or even sixty. I am going to help you go in the right direction to prevent osteoporosis and keep your bones strong.
There are a few factors to consider in realizing this goal.
*** your age
*** your physical strength and work out habits
*** your lifestyle meaning active, sedentary, stressed or relaxed
Firstly, you need to understand osteoporosis, or bone loss. The bones both carry calcium out of the bone tissue into the blood, and then put it back, on a regular basis. In other words, your body keeps renewing bone tissue, just like we trim plants of brown-tipped or thinner, smaller leaves, and then have them grow new and better stems and leaves. Or more blooms.
This article is not about the nutrition of calcium, magnesium and other minerals, but I mention them just to note that they are necessary in your diet.
Also, Vitamin K2, now often added to Vitamin D3, to enhance bone re-building, triggers the placement of calcium from your veins and arteries, back into your bones.
Exercise, a high intensity exertion, of muscles upon bone also triggers the bones to retain their density. So hopefully you exercise your large muscle groups with a high intensity challenging workout, one that increase your heart and lung capacity, which paced high intensity exercise will do.
What I am leading up to is the regular stretching and relaxation of your large muscle groups, and the hips in particular. Hip flexibility is extremely important. You have major muscles pulling and pushing and balancing your hips, keeping your skeleton safe from bumps, trips and falls. Brain health and reflexes are involved as well, but strength and balance is key.
Balance depends on strength, but also depends on the hip muscles at the front, side and back of the body, being equally strong, toned, stretched and relaxed.
Tense muscles cause pain, and skeletal imbalance. The millions of tiny movements and adjustments we do every day, to change body positions and stay on balance, are way outside of our awareness. As it should be. Providing there is no resistance from tension, or jammed up joints in our body, we can practically glide around doing whatever we need to do.
And grab our balance without even thinking if anything disrupts our flow of movement. Most of us do this for the first couple of decades of our life. Until an impact or injury occurs. Then we develop some scar tissue, and lose a little of our former mobility and ease of movement.
Yet, with the right rehabilitation and education, we can proceed to the next stage of our life becoming stronger and wiser.
To retain hip flexibility, and the ease of movement to keep exercising, and retain reflexes and balance, you need to learn how hip stretches work.
Keeping that part of your body balanced means stretching and toning the front of the hips, the side and the back of the hips. To keep the front of the hips stretched, you would need to include the Quadriceps, or large front of your thigh muscles. Then you would need to stretch your psoas muscle which goes from the front of your upper thigh, over your hip bone, to attach onto the front of your spine.
Keeping the psoas muscle stretched means that your natural posture, a small curve in your low back, and your pelvis structure upright (not tilted forward nor back) is preserved. Your walking and general moving around will be relaxed and easy.
However, if the front of your hips are fairly relaxed, but for some reason your side and back of hip muscles are tense, your skeleton cannot move so easily. Your balance will not be quite as on. This kind of imbalance can even lead to the tendons that go over your hip joint snapping or popping as you move.
Ideally, you want to stretch out all your muscle groups, after exercise, and even instead of exercise when you can't fit it in. To keep your neck, shoulder and back muscles relaxed is important. If you sit on a chair all day, you know what I mean. If you do one type of repetitive movement all day, you know what I mean. Ouch.
Nutrition and exercise keep bones strong.
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