Exercises for Osteoporosis, Osteopenia and whole body Osteoarthritis by Dr Andrea Furlan MD PhD

My name is Andrea Furlan. I'm a specialist in physical medicine rehabilitation and today I'm going to talk about osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is the silent thief. It's a thief because it steals the calcium from our bones and makes the bones weaker and weaker without causing any symptom, doesn't have any symptom, until one day the person falls and have a fracture and then they find out that they have advanced severe osteoporosis. We don't know what causes osteoporosis but we do know that there are some medications that help keep the calcium in the bones and we also know that there are exercises that are helpful to keep the calcium in the bones, to make the muscles stronger, to increase our balance, so to reduce the risk of falls and we are going to talk about those We know that osteoporosis affects men and women. It affects women one in three above the age of 50 and one in five men. The most common sites of fracture in osteoporosis include the hips, the spine, the shoulders and the wrists. So the exercises that I'm going to teach today are basically four types of exercise. Balance exercises, aerobic exercises, strengthening exercises and endurance exercises and to remember this B.A.S.E. we're going to talk about the base exercises. My mother is in her 70s and she has osteoporosis and she does these exercises regularly so I'm going to demonstrate those for you. You don't need to do all of these exercises at once, you can break them. If you do all of those it may take between 30 and 60 minutes depending on how many repetitions you do but you can also break them towards a couple of days during the week. At the end I'm going to show you how you can do them so you do all of them in a week. So in order to do this routine of exercise you're going to need very little equipment but I'm going to show you what you need and you can do this at home and especially these days that a lot of people can't get out of your home and you are isolated at home you can do this easily if you have a strong chair. You're going to need a chair that is strong sturdy because we're going to use this for our exercises. You're also going to need some weights and if you don't have professional weights at home these are very good. These are like a you know these bags of beans they weigh 900 grams so anything that is equivalent to about one kilogram at home that will be helpful. You also if you have at home ankle weights so if you have something that you can wrap around your ankles to increase the weight of your legs that would be good but if you don't have don't worry about it these ones have 1.1 kilogram each so they make my legs very heavy which is good because then I'll be doing more strengthening exercises because of this ankle weights. Also if you have at home any resistance band that will be excellent but if you don't have any elastic band would work because we're going to use this for some of the exercises we're going to do. You also will need a room or a corridor that you will be able to walk especially preferably without any carpet because we don't want to trip and fall and we also are going to need a wall to do some of the exercises. So that's all let's get started. So I'm going to follow a routine of 26 exercises and at the end you can print this routine from the description of the video below or you can also take a picture of this video after I show this to you. So the first exercise we're going to do is with the chair we're going to hold on the back of the chair and we're going to stand in place and we're going to raise our heels up and down up and down. So usually we start with eight repetitions three four five six seven eight and as you get stronger you're going to increase the repetitions and then you can increase to 12 to 15 or 20. So that's the exercise number one. The exercise number two is we're going to stand on one foot and raise the other one and you're going to do this for eight times each leg and if that's too easy this is exercise for balance you can let go your hands and you're going to see that that's harder because if you're not used to do this you're going to lose your balance. So here we're doing strengthening exercises for our hamstrings and we are also doing balance exercises and the longer you stay on one foot and you let your hands go the better and you're going to see that you're trying to balance on one foot you're going to feel the muscles of your calf the muscles of your chin acting to increase your balance not let you fall. Always remember to hold on the chair. Then the exercise number three is walking exercise so we are going to walk on a normal pace so walk if you have a corridor you can go back and forth back and forth and do this for about one minute. So the fourth exercise is walking with one foot in front of the other one walking in tendon you'll see that this is hard on your balance if this is too hard for you you can just walk with your feet close to each other with a narrow base and do this for about one minute. So the exercise number five is walking backwards. Walk backwards is also important because you need a good balance to walk backwards. So walk backwards for about one minute. The exercise number six is walking sideways and this is really important because if we remember that one of the sides of fracture osteoporosis fracture is the hip and that's usually because the muscles that sustain our hips are the glutes muscles and they are weak so walking sideways is important to strengthen the gluteus muscles that are important to hold our hips in place. So doing like this and do this for about one minute. The exercise number seven is walking doing lunges and lunges are basically you put one foot in front of you you lower and the other one you lower and the other one and lower. Be careful not to fall. It's important that you give a big step in front of you. So the exercise number eight is walking like a ballerina walking on your tiptoes and coming back on your heels. So go forward on your tiptoes and come backwards on your heels. And do this a couple of times. Now the next exercise is we're going to do all of this walking exercises but now adding the beans the bags of beans and doing exercises with our arms. So the exercise number nine is walking normal but now we are going to do opening your arms. You don't need to go above the level of your shoulders here is enough and you're going to walk normal and opening your arms like if you are flying. Open your wings like you're flying as you are walking normal. Okay and do this for another one minute and now we're going to walk in tendon with the beans holding the beans open there walking tendon and turn. The exercise number 11 is walking backwards with the beans in your hands and around. The exercise number 12 is walking sideways and now we are going to do with the beans to the level of our shoulders. You can do this for one minute. Now we are going to do lunges with the beans and for these ones you can just hold them on the side of your body. So front lower front lower lower front front lower front lower. So now we are going to walk with the beans and on our tiptoes. Go forward on the tiptoes and go backwards on the heels. Now if you have stairs at home we're going to do some step exercises. So the first the important thing is that if you have railing always hold on to the railings and we're going to do one step first and what you're going to do is left and left and left so left up left down left up left down left up left down. You're going to do this for one minute. If you don't have stairs at home you can get a stepping board and do this at home. Make sure that you have some railing something for you to hold on. So left down left up do this for one minute. Now you're going to do the right up and right down. So right up right down right up right down right up right down right up right down right up do this for one minute. Now the other exercise is to go all the way up and all the way down. If you can do this make sure that you have the railing and we are going to do one with all the left foot. Left foot up and left foot down. We're going to do left foot first and then the right foot. The exercise 19 is to strengthen your quads and the muscles in the back of your thighs. So we're going to do a sit to stand. So you can start with the sitting position coming to the edge of the chair and then you stand up and sit again. You can do this eight times and when this becomes easy what you're going to do is you're not going to sit anymore. You're going to stand and you're going to squat touch the chair and stand touch the chair and stand touch the chair and stand and if you feel you're going to lose your balance or you're getting tired you can sit and stand sit and stand. The exercise number 20 is the same thing but now with the bags in front of you. Sit and stand touch the chair and stand touch the chair and stand touch the chair. So if you have resistance bands you're going to do this exercise. Keep the elbows close to your body and your hands in the horizontal position like this and you're going to pull apart and come back two three four five six seven eight. This is exercise for our shoulders the back of our shoulders also for the hands. Keep your wrist aligned don't do this with the wrist keep them straight. The other exercise with the resistance band you're going to put the resistance band behind you under your arms and you're going to pull them this direction here. Again don't move your wrists you're going to pull them forward you're going to bend your elbows and straighten your elbows. This is exercise for the triceps here so straight bend in front of you and do this eight times and then you can increase to 12 to 15 and 20. As your muscles get stronger and stronger you're going to notice that it's going to be easy to do this and then you can do more repetitions. That's when we are going to start doing the endurance exercise. Endurance means you're building more muscle mass and you can do more repetitions. The other exercise with the resistance band you're going to put them under your thighs you're going to hold like this and this will be for the biceps here. We're going to pull up again don't move your wrists too much keep them straight and fixed you're going to move only your elbow just the elbows are bending and do this eight times and when this is easy you repeat 12 and then 15 and then 20. So this exercise is push-ups but we're going to do push-ups on the wall so you go apart from the wall and you're going to go forward. It's important that your spine is aligned with your hips that it's like a straight line so don't do this because it puts too much pressure on your spine. What you have to do is this and bring your face close to the wall just eight times. Now this exercise is to align your spine so you're going to find a wall and you try to put your the back of your head touching the wall the back of your shoulders touching the wall and your hips touching the wall and your feet is about one feet apart from the wall and you're going to do this inhale try to do this and touch all of your spine on the wall and you're going to go down down down down down down and stay there in this position touching see if you can touch all of the spine on the wall if possible keep your head touching the wall and stay in this position you're going to feel some strength here stay there for three seconds and then come up so now you're going to do this exercise with the beanbags in front of you so touch the back of your head shoulders hips and go down and stay there three seconds but with the beanbag the bags of beans in your hands and go up so you have noticed that all the exercise that we did with the shoulders we didn't go beyond more higher than this the shoulder levels now we are going to do we are going to go higher and to do this we're going to use the wall here and we're going to go up up whenever possible if you can do this and then come back that's called the wall angels we're going to do the angels wings here on the wall and this is an exercise for the shoulders called the wall angels so now another exercise for the shoulders is the fingers walking on the wall so you find a wall and the fingers start going up and up and up stretch when you get there stretch and come down and do this eight repetitions or as many as you can do so fingers go up on the wall when you get there stretch stretch stretch and then come down you can do one arm at a time if you can't do both but if you feel you can do both arms just do both at the same time so it's important that you do this routine every week and what i what i recommend is that you do the balance exercises every day you do the aerobic exercises maybe three four times a week as long as you do maybe 150 minutes every week that's good the strengthening exercises is good also to do three times a week and the endurance exercises just increasing the amount of repetitions you can do so every time you do the exercises try to do them for longer than you did before and do more repetitions so it's important that you keep a diary that you keep in a paper that you take notes how many repetitions you did how many minutes you were able to do so then the next time you can increase the amount of exercise that you are doing please remember that this video is not intended to provide medical advice if you think that you have osteoporosis and you need medication or treatment please consult with your physician and if you think you need exercises please consult with a professional who is an expert in exercise such as a physiotherapist or a kinesiologist and they can help you to modify this routine for you this video is only for educational purposes if you like this video don't forget to like it don't forget to subscribe to this channel and turn on the notifications to be alerted when i post new videos on this channel i also tweet i have a facebook page and an instagram account and you can contact me there asking questions making suggestions or comments to these videos thank you for watching bye