Bone building exercise for children is much more critical that parents realize and may prevent osteoporosis as they age.
Most parents do a lot of things to ensure the health of their child. From better eating habits, vitamin supplements, discouraging drinking, smoking and drugs – the list of what parents do for their children seems endless at times.
Having more bone tissue as a young adult is helpful in staving off osteoporosis as we age. But, truth be told, we’ve never met a young adult who’s worried about osteoporosis! We get that. You probably couldn’t have cared less in your 20’s about the strength of your bones. Here’s where you, as a parent, can help.
Encourage your children to do weight-bearing exercise when they’re young.Hopefully they’ll enjoy these activities as they mature and continue into young adulthood. Tennis, running, basketball, soccer are all great activities for your most active bone building years, which is late teens to your twenties. If your children love to swim or bike, that’s great too, but you need to balance that with a weight bearing activity. One instance where this came to light was when Olympic Cyclists where tested and compared for bone density in their age group. While extremely fit, they were found to be shockingly low in bone density. Teams have since added weight bearing exercise to their training regime.
So get your kids out there “pounding the pavement”, while you still have time to influence what they do.