Today we explore how you can promote your bone health. I recently wrote about how vitamin D supplementation may not be associated with a lower risk of bone fractures:Vitamin D: What? It Doesn’t Prevent Bone Fractures?VITAMIN D SUPPLEMENTS DO NOT REDUCE FRACTURE RISK, at least among adults in midlife and older adults. That is the…medium.com.

But what can you do to optimize your bone strength? Let’s examine exercise — types and duration — that can help you dodge bone issues. First, a look at poor bone health.

Poor bone health

Bone is living tissue, one that constantly breaks down and replaces itself. Osteoporosis happens when the new bone formation does not keep up with the bone loss.

Osteoporosis results in bones becoming brittle and weak — even mild stresses such as coughing may result in a fracture. Fractures secondary to osteoporosis commonly occur in the spine, wrist, or hip.

Osteoporosis strikes men and women and can affect individuals of any race. The highest risk is among older women who are past menopause.

Your osteoporosis risk hinges, at least partly, on how much bone mass you attained in your youth. Our peak bone mass has an inherited genetic component, and mass varies by ethnicity. The higher your peak bone mass, the lower the odds you’ll get osteoporosis.

Bone density peaks at about 30 years of age. Women lose bone mass more rapidly than men. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteoporosis

I approach osteoporosis risk-reduction with a two-pronged approach: 1) maximizing peak bone mass; and 2) minimizing bone loss.

Osteoporosis risk-reduction — Peak bone mass

To optimize your peak bone mass, have a healthy lifestyle during the bone-forming years, especially adolescence. Here are the components:

• Nutrition. Adequate calcium and vitamin D intake are important. Children ages 9 to 18 should consume about 1300 milligrams of calcium daily, preferably from calcium-rich or calcium-fortified foods. A meta-analysis of 19 randomized trials showed a small increase in total body mineral content in children receiving calcium supplementation (300 to 1200 milligrams daily) compared with those taking a placebo.
• Physical activity. Exercise promotes bone health. On the other hand, excessive physical activity can harm bone health.
• Avoid smoking. While cigarettes damage bones, quitting can improve bone density (within one year of cessation).
• Avoid alcohol. Chronic heavy alcohol use, especially during adolescence and young adult years, can dramatically hurt bone health, increasing the future risk of osteoporosis.
• Avoid eating disorders. For example, anorexia nervosa, an increasingly common eating disorder in female adolescents, is linked with drops in bone mineral density and increased fracture risk.

Nutritional disorders in adolescence (such as inflammatory bowel disease, cystic fibrosis, and celiac disease) can interfere with bone formation. In addition, congenital disorders such as cystic fibrosis appear associated with low bone mass.

Osteoporosis risk-reduction — Minimizing bone loss

Alas, I am beyond peak bone mass time. My goal is to stabilize my bone mineral density (BMD) or reduce my rate of bone loss.

The United States Surgeon General’s Report on Bone Health and Osteoporosis suggests adopting a pyramid approach to preventing osteoporosis. Doing this means that we focus on physical activity, nutrition, and fall prevention. The second tier of risk reduction includes addressing diseases and drugs associated with bone loss. The third tier involves the use of bone-building drugs.

Let’s start with tier one:

• Physical activity and bone health. Do you do weight-bearing physical activity? Doing so can improve bone mineral density modestly for pre-and postmenopausal women and men. The Surgeon General suggests we aim for 30 minutes on most days of the week. An added benefit? You may improve your muscle tone and reduce your chances of falling.

Weight-Bearing Exercise: 8 Workouts for Strong BonesHere are the latest weight-bearing workout trends. What are the best ways to exercise and improve your bone health when…www.webmd.com

• Nutrition and bone health. The optimal intake (diet plus any supplements) of vitamin D and calcium is not established for men or premenopausal women, with many advocates suggesting about 1000 milligrams of calcium. The World Health Organization recommends 500 mg of calcium daily, and the United Kingdom sets the goal at 700 mg.

Interestingly, in 1997, an Institute of Medicine (USA) panel lifted the recommended level for calcium intake from 800 to 1200 milligrams daily for women over 50. The panel based this recommendation based on calcium balance studies lasting only weeks.

We don’t have evidence that consuming that amount of calcium reduces the risk of breaking a bone. The recommendation remains, however. The optimal amount for men or premenopausal women is not known.

What about vitamin D? The 2018 US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) concluded that “there was insufficient evidence to assess the benefits and harms of calcium and vitamin D supplementation for the primary prevention of fracture in men and premenopausal women.”

The panel recommended against supplementation with 400 international units of vitamin D (and 1000 milligrams or less of calcium) for the primary prevention of fractures in postmenopausal women. It concluded that there is no good evidence to assess the benefits and harms of higher doses.

Individuals at higher risk of being low in vitamin D (such as older individuals confined indoors) may benefit from higher doses. If you take vitamin D supplements, you may wish to consider adding vitamin K:Top 6 Sources of Vitamin KVITAMIN K IS AN ESSENTIAL NUTRIENT central to bone and heart health and blood clotting. You have heard about the roles…medium.com

One potential downside of calcium supplementation? You may raise your risk of kidney stones. Those in the landmark Women’s Health Initiative study who took calcium and vitamin D had a higher risk of kidney stones compared with those taking a placebo. Getting that calcium through food may be best, as high dietary levels may protect against kidney stones.Healthy Foods High in CalciumYour body holds an abundance of calcium. Around 99% of this mineral is stored in your bones and teeth.www.webmd.com

Of course, you shouldn’t smoke (for numerous reasons). Cigarette use is linked with reduced bone mineral density and a higher fracture probability.

Excessive alcohol consumption (more than two United States drinks or three United Kingdom units) harms bone health for many reasons.

Finally, I won’t review pharmaceutical agents (such as hormonal replacement therapy for menopausal women) that help to fight bone loss.

Oh, one more thing: Resistance training may also help you dodge premature death:

Weight-lifting and LongevityRUN, SWIM, JOG, OR WALK. So many cry out for all of us to get more physical activity. But are we being remiss in not…medium.com

The post Are You Destroying Your Bones? appeared first on Medika Life.

STOCKHOLM/PRNewswire/ — Medtech company Bioservo Technologies is releasing an updated version of the groundbreaking exoskeleton glove – Ironhand^® 2.0, complete with improved activation, better grip, advanced data collection and much more in order to reduce the occurrence of hand-related repetitive strain injuries (RSIs) in industry workplaces.

Ironhand^® is the world’s first active soft exoskeleton for the hand, and the grip-strengthening glove won the NASA Commercial Invention of the Year Award in July 2020. It mimics the grasp movements of the user’s hands, providing extra strength and endurance to the grip, thus helping to conserve the worker’s energy and reduce the risk of RSIs and other musculoskeletal disorders. Ironhand has since been trialled by workers in manufacturing, industry and other industries prone to repetitive strain injuries, showing promising results. To further develop their invention, Bioservo is releasing a new and improved version of the grip-strengthening glove on June 7, 2021. At the same time they will launch the highly useful application IronConnect Pro. The app collects useful information from the glove when it is in use and summarizes the data into ergonomic risk assessment reports in order to track risk of injury and prevent it.

Improving quality of life for workers in danger of RSI and MSD

Bioservo Technologies developed the powerful exoskeleton glove as a preventative measure against industry and manufacturing-related injuries, to aid ergonomists and employees performing repetitive manual tasks. It is already too late when an RSI has occurred – it is often difficult to regain full usage of the impaired hand, requiring extended sick leave and often expensive physiotherapy treatments. Ironhand 2.0 enables you to prevent the injury beforehand by helping the operator perform repetitive and injury-inducing tasks while providing you with ergonomic data to help assess the risk of injury in advance. The best ergonomist is the one practicing preventative measures to eliminate the need for physiotherapy and reducing or completely eradicating RSIs and other workplace injuries.

Ironhand 2.0 – Keeping people strong, healthy and efficient

The Ironhand system is a smart active exoskeleton, meaning that the glove is activated when the operator starts moving their hand to perform a task, using sensors located on the palm and in the fingers’ tips and middle phalanges. To further improve the glove’s functionality through machine learning, the glove learns from the user and after a while it can finish a movement or grip at just the slightest flick of the user’s fingers – having learned how the operator moves their hand before and during a certain task. As the system is connected to the internet through 4G or Wi-Fi, it continuously sends collected data that can be analyzed.

– We have opened up for using Ironhand in many more applications and work tasks by adding and improving sensors, increasing the speed, and creating a more natural force transfer making it easier to activate when performing a diverse set of movements. In addition to this we have improved the user experience and comfort with carry solutions that are much easier to put on and adjust for an optimal fit. These are just a few of the upgrades we’ve added to Ironhand 2.0. You could almost say it’s an entirely new glove, says Petter Bäckgren, CEO, Bioservo.

Optimized installation and usage through IronConnect Pro

The data collected by the glove when in use is sent to the cloud. The data is used by IronConnect Pro, a sophisticated application designed to oversee the usage of the exo-glove and maximize benefit through the optimization of the glove’s settings and data. IronConnect Pro can be used with both iOS and Android and is set to be released on June 7, 2021 together with Ironhand 2.0. With the application you can see what glove is in use and where, what operator is using it, what grips it is performing and much more. Additionally, the app analyzes the data in order to create Ergonomic Risk Assessment reports . This way, you can see if the operator is in danger of an RSI before it happens – enabling you to take action and prevent the injury before it occurs.

For more information please contact:

Petter Bäckgren, CEO, Bioservo Technologies AB
Phone: +46 70 555 69 97
Email: petter.backgren@bioservo.com

Mikael

Wester, Marketing Director, Bioservo Technologies AB
Phone: +46 70 721 12 80
Email: mikael.wester@bioservo.com

About Bioservo Technologies

Bioservo Technologies AB (publ) is a world leading company in wearable muscle strengthening systems for people in need of extra strength and endurance. All our innovative products and systems are designed to keep people strong, healthy and efficient. 

The company has a unique global position within soft exoskeleton technology for the hand, both for industrial applications to improve the health for workers and to improve quality of life for people with impaired hand function. Bioservo Technologies was founded in 2006 in collaboration between researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology and a doctor at Karolinska University Hospital. Bioservo Technologies is a Swedish public limited company with headquarters in Stockholm.

FNCA Sweden AB, +46(0)8-52800399, info@fnca.se is the company’s Certified Adviser on Nasdaq First North Growth Market.

For more information, please visit www.bioservo.com

The post Ironhand 2.0 – The new version of award-winning exoskeleton glove appeared first on Medika Life.