The Bone Battle No One Is Talking About: How Strength Changes Everything

The Bone Battle No One Is Talking About: How Strength Changes Everything

Chances are, if you are a woman in perimenopause and beyond, or really even over 40, you have heard that it is so important for women in this age and stage to strength train. But have you ever really considered why? Today I am talking about one of the reasons that we need to strength train and its impact on our bones that nobody is talking about.

Stick around. 

I live in the Houston, Texas area. And as I record this in March of 2025, it is officially spring. Now I know the calendar hasn't said spring, but actually the local meteorologists say that it is spring and that starts on March 1st. Also, I can tell because Grass pollen is high, tree pollen is high, I can look out my window and see buds on all the trees.

On my daily walk with my dog today, I saw the very beginning buds of something that it's, it's a really pretty tree and it has like this red, these red leaves as it come out and like, it is total springtime. It's also time for me to take care of my beloved lemon tree that my mother in law literally like, propagated from another lemon tree.

I've had this for several years and I take such good care of it. Like I am not a green thumb person, but this lemon tree, I, I, baby, we had a really big freeze a few weeks ago and I go in and I, I just, I bundle it up. I put the bubble wrap around it. I put the towels around it. Sometimes if it gets really cold.

This is so ridiculous but I will put the hand warmers down in there to keep it warm like I go all out over this lemon tree. So thankfully it did survive the last freeze and I'm starting to see new blooms come from it which is so fun for me to do but there's also a lot of dead limbs that I need to prune off, that I need to trim off.

And down below where the tree was protected is new growth. I'm starting to see the leaves. I actually saw a bud on one of them, which is really surprising. Now, what does this have to do with today's conversation about bone building? I want this lemon tree to be an analogy for the two primary things we're going to be talking about today, which are osteoblasts and osteoclasts. 

It's probably not news to you that women our age and beyond really do need to strength train.

There's just not a conversation about overall health for women in perimenopause and beyond that doesn't involve strength training. But have you ever considered, like, why is that so important? Beyond the obvious, which is we want to have a lot of muscle. So absolutely, I am a huge proponent of gaining muscle, of being strong.

And so, yes, we do want to have strong muscles. We have also heard this. About strength training in relationship to our bone health, but I don't think that the health industry in general is diving into that too much. People are not talking about actually what is going on with our bones and why strength training is helpful to our bone building. 

And of course we do care about our bone health. I mean, the scary statistics are that within the first five to seven years after menopause that we can lose about 20 percent of our bone density. That's scary stuff because we want to not only have our strong muscles, but we also want to have a strong skeletal system so we don't break our bones.

Today I want to talk about the function and mechanism that is happening within our bones and why strength training can help.This episode is going to be great for those of you who like to know the why and if you just want to know the What then come back next week because I will be building on this But I have heard so many people say I will do it if I know the why behind it so here is one of the why's behind why you need to strength train to help your bone health in perimenopause and beyond.

we have cells on the outside of our bones. This is probably not news to you because our entire body is made out of cells. Two of these cells are called osteoblasts and osteoclasts. Osteoblasts

osteoblasts are bone building cells that synthesize and deposit new bone matrix and help with its mineralization. What does that mean in layman's terms? It means that it helps build your bones. It helps make them stronger. They're kind of like the construction workers that hang out on the surface of your bones.

So their job. So what they do is to build the new bone, They lay down the framework for your bone that's mostly made of collagen and then they help harden it with minerals like calcium. We've talked about calcium before and the importance of it but that is what the osteoblasts do. the way I remember it is blasts are bone building BB bone building blasts.

Osteoclasts on the other hand will actually break down the bone tissue and release minerals back into the bloodstream. They are more like a cleanup crew.They are dissolving old or damaged bone and then they release those stored minerals back into your bloodstream so they could be used elsewhere in your body or recycled into new bone. So they kind of come in with that cleanup crew and then the blast can come in and build new bone. The way I remember this is clasts.

cleanup crew. So blasts build the bone, the clasts clean it up. Both of these are important. And when we are in our season prior to perimenopause or particularly menopause and beyond, then these work in tandemAnd they have a real symbiotic relationship. Everything is nice and balanced. Well, guess what happens when we start to lose estrogen? 

the osteoclasts start ramping up, but the osteoblasts don't keep up. So we have this cleanup crew that's just doing its job, but it's doing too good of a job. 

 it's kind of like if you have a cast iron skillet and you've taken the time and you've seasoned it and you're using that and it has that nice little oil sheenBut then you pull out a really firm scrub brush and abrasive cleaner and you're scrubbing so much that it pulls down that oil sheen and actually does 

So much that the pan can be vulnerable to damage or rust or deterioration. So that's what's happening with the osteoclasts in our bones is we have more of those going on than the osteoblasts, which is building those up.

So going back to my lemon tree, yes, I want to prune down the dead branches, but I don't want to prune it so much so that it starts to damage the tree. We want to have that nice balance of pruning, but then allowing for that growth to come back for that lemon tree so it can produce fruit in the future. This is where my lemon tree example ends, because I can't really figure out a way to use that analogy going into, well, what do we do about the increasing osteoclasts and the osteoblasts not keeping up with it? We can put the lemon tree example to the side, but let's talk about our bodies.

What to do, because this is It's a little depressing if we're honest, like, Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? Well, it's probably not news to you if you read the title of this episode,But guess what? good news. Actually, one thing that can help activate the osteoblasts as we get older and always is strength training.Strength training will activate those osteoblasts, which can offset some of that natural imbalance that occurs with your estrogen decline.Am I saying this is going to put everything in an alignment? No. However, what we can do is we can. Decrease that gap between the osteoclast, which cleaning, cleaning, cleaning and the blasts of the building. When we. So if we stress our bone through resistance training, then what happens is you create these little microscopic stress fractures in our bones, not unlike when we are strength training, we create little microscopic tears in our muscles.

But those little small, small, small stress fractures will signal the osteoblast to increase their bone building activity. the strength training and the resistance is saying, Hey, kick in, we need to build this up because we're still creating the osteoblast. It's just that there's those differences.

It's not like we're not creating any more osteoblasts as we get older. It's just that The gap widens. And so when we strength train, we decrease that gap. 

doing this can help preserve your bone density.When we do this, here's another nice little side effect. It can actually. Signal the previously inactive osteoblasts, so maybe we had some osteoblasts there that just weren't working very hard to build that bone up, it will activate them to become metabolically active and they will start working. It also extends the lifespan of those osteoblasts, so it allows them to build more for longer.

 this is one reason why resistance training is so helpful before and after. And the sooner you can start strength training, the better. But let me tell you, if you have not ever done it, or if you have been diagnosed with osteoporosis and you're wanting to do something, 

Then absolutely. You can still start. It is not too late. They've done plenty of studies on the benefits of starting strength training as mature adults.And you will absolutely gain the benefits of it. Now, I feel like I can't let you go without saying you need to build up your strength. And so start with something small and progressively load. This is not something we have to do overnight. But we're just going to start training our muscles great episode with Dr. And so we're going to be talking about osteoblasts and training those osteoblasts to kick in and start building those bones.Back in season 16, episode 21, the title was worried about osteoporosis, prevent or manage it with these strategies, Dr. Doug brought a wealth of information. And if you are interested in learning more, you can definitely go check him out and check out his resources. Hehe has an amazing YouTube channel as well. obviously this one short episode is not going to cover all of the things and all of the elements about our bone health. And quite honestly, I'm not qualified or smart enough to answer all of that, but as a personal trainer and as someone who cares about your holistic health, I wanted you to know the why of why we I'm going to talk about why strength training is so helpful because you've got people probably in your ear about it all the time.

And I think it's helpful to know the reason why behind it when we're asking, when people are asking you to do something, it's the why behind the what. So this is one of the reasons why. Now, if you're sitting here thinking, okay, so great. Now I know the why, what do I do with that? Okay. Tune in next week and I will be talking about strength training essentials in women our agein four vulnerable areas,Three of which are vulnerable areas that women will often break when their bones start to not be as strong as they used to be. So be sure to come back next week, hit that follow button or subscribe or whatever it on whatever player that you'd like to listen to. But I would love for you to tune in next week where I'm going to give you some very applicable things and I've got a free download for you next week so you can check that out and start applying.

and start activating your osteoblasts. You did not know that you had something new that you wanted to activate, but now you do let's go osteoblasts building up that muscle. Okay. That's all for today. Go out there and have a grace day.