So oops, I didn’t post last night! But I have a good reason! My boyfriend surprised me with a 2 month old kitty!!! I’ve never had a cat before, so this is all new to me…and getting one mid-semester…well, we will just see how this goes…especially with anatomy and physiology midterms next week. I’m very excited!…about the cat, not the midterms!
Anyway, I’ll post what I learned yesterday and then I’ll see about writing a post for today.
What’s really interesting is that when you go to the gym you typically see men lifting weights and women doing cardio. So this is obviously nothing new…so why is this interesting? Well, men are at a higher risk for cardiovascular disease and women are at a higher risk for osteoporosis which basically means that men, you need to start doing some cardio and women, you need to start lifting some weights.
We talked a little about osteoporosis yesterday, so I’m going to focus on that. Men and women tend to lose around 3% of their bone density per decade. Unfortunately for us ladies, this process begins around the age of 35, as opposed to men who start this process around the age of 45. Bummer. It gets worse. When women hit menopause they begin losing around 9% of their bone density per decade while men remain at around 3%. About 10-15 years after the onset of menopause, women will return to 3% per decade. Because of the earlier start to bone density loss and because of the spike in the rate of loss in bone density, women are at greater risk for osteoporosis.
What can you do to fight the onset this? Resistance training or high impact activities. There was a study that found that doing resistance training consistently for a year result in a 2-3% increase in bone mineral density just in that year. Well that doesn’t seem like very much now does it? Pfft…why work out for a whole year just for a measly 2-3% increase in your bone mineral density?! Well it turns out that this results in an increase in bone strength of about 25-60%…which is HUGE! So ladies, the next time you’re at the gym, maybe throw in a couple weight exercises. And don’t be afraid to lift with the boys! Chances are they’re only checking themselves out (maybe don’t even go into the weight room to lift weights…just go watch all the men stare at themselves in the mirror…pretty funny!)
On a totally random side note…
When are epiphyseal plates close, we stop growing. Did you know….the epiphyseal plates of rats never close. YIKES!!!
The Life of a DPT Student 