A woman called yesterday and was disappointed that it was only possible to put 16 lbs of weight in my weight vest – weightvest4osteoporosis.com She really wanted to carry 40 lbs. She felt fit and healthy and just wanted to fix her bones as fast as possible.
I told her that even the trainers for Olympic athletes recommended only 10% of body weight for the vest, which in her case would have been 15 lbs. She wasn’t convinced. She talked about making an extra collar of weights to put on top of the vest.
My reaction was an immediate “No” and I trust my intuition almost completely. So I asked myself what the problem was. I got a picture in my mind of our discs, those jelly-like little blobs that keep the vertebrae in our spine from rubbing up against each other. As we get older these little blobs become less bouncy, less elastic, less full, they can even collapse down to nothing like a spent balloon. Then we can experience severe back pain because our cushioning is gone.
There are many women who exercise a lot, perhaps too much from the research I am reading, who think that more is better. These women are very upset when their exercising, careful diet and lack of common vices, are not enough to prevent osteopenia or osteoporosis. I know the feeling! But I think the answer is twofold.
First the numbers have been invented and lowered to make the disease seem more common in order to prescribe more bone drugs. Second, we are doing so many untested experiments on ourselves now, with thousands of new chemicals in the diet and environment, cell phones emissions, genetically modified food that is actually feeding us pesticides. All of this is affecting our bones.
So, don’t overdo it with the weights. Think of your body as the most incredible miracle, with zillions of interacting pieces, a dance of light within your skin, a magical inner land where one thought can change everything in an instant. We are so blessed to be doing this dance.
Enjoy your day,
Pam