MENOPAUSE SYMPTOMS: FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO OSTEOPOROSIS
Recent UK research suggests that, although our health is generally better than that of women in centuries past, we seem to be more prone to osteoporosis than our female forebears. A team of researchers examining bones buried between 1729 and 1852 in the crypt of a London church found that the rate of bone deterioration was lower than in modern women of a similar age. They suggested that lack of exercise in modern lifestyles might be an important factor. The women buried in the crypt came from a section of the city dominated by the silk-weaving industry. Their work involved considerable movement in the upright position, activities now known to increase beneficial pressure on the skeleton and stimulation of bone formation.
To benefit bones, exercise has to be vigorous and prolonged, averaging three to five hours a week in total (adding together short bursts of activity) at 75 per cent of maximal aerobic capacity, that is, three-quarters of the peak workload that your heart and blood vessels can manage. And this workload has to be maintained. In one study, the benefit to bone density achieved during one year of an exercise program was lost entirely in the year after it finished.
Other inherited and lifestyle factors believed to contribute to osteoporosis include race (Asian and Caucasian women are at greater risk than Polynesian and Negroid women), a small body build, an excessive intake of alcohol or caffeine (from coffee, tea and soft drinks), insufficient dietary calcium, smoking, the intestinal malabsorption condition known as coeliac disease, a high salt intake, a diet rich in fat and protein, and the excessive use of antacids containing aluminium, or of cortisone-like drugs.
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