The Strong Bones Coach Podcast
A health and wellness podcast dedicated space to breaking the silence on osteoporosis. Carly Killen a dietitian and women's strength coach specialising in bone health is here to empower, inspire, and educate midlife listeners about better bone health.
We explore strategies for strength training, time management, and conquering fears. Join us on this journey towards creating fracture-free futures.
New episodes drop weekly, offering expert insights, actionable tips, and inspirational stories. Your path to stronger bones starts here!
The Strong Bones Coach Podcast
042: How to manage OSTEOPOROSIS without MEDICATION
Is this the best diet for bone health in menopause >>> https://pod.fo/e/1f3a90
How to exercise with Osteoporosis >>> https://pod.fo/e/22946b
Overcome overthinking 3 easy things to try >>> https://pod.fo/e/24efb6
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hello@carlykillencoaching.com
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Thanks for listening to The Strong Bones Coach Podcast!
If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: hello@carlykillencoaching.com
📱 Instagram: @thestrongbonescoach
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Hello and welcome back to the strong bones coach podcast with me, Carly, your host, and I'm so glad you're here today. In today's episode, we are looking at a topic that is incredibly important. If you have been diagnosed with osteoporosis, today we are talking all about how to manage osteoporosis without or beyond medication. So whether you're unable to take medication, have chosen not to, or are looking for additional ways to support your bones alongside your prescribed treatment, this episode is for you. If you have been diagnosed with osteoporosis, you might have a lot of questions. One that commonly comes up is what to do outside of medication. Now, I'm not against the use of medications for osteoporosis, that is a decision between you and your healthcare provider, however, there are reasons you might not be able to take medication, or perhaps you've decided that it's your choice not to from an informed place, and that is absolutely fine, I'm here to empower you to make your own decisions here, but maybe you have got medication prescribed and you're wondering what else you can do to support yourself alongside it. So this episode is here to help you understand how to support your bones beyond osteoporosis medications. Helps along with a story about my client who has achieved this beautifully with stable bone mass, high energy and confidence, even though she only started at the age of 75. So if you're wondering if you've left it too late to start caring for your body, mind and bones, she is the perfect testament that you have not. So let's start with looking at a recap of bone density and our age. So your bone density is how much bone mass you have. And there are key periods in your life when you can build this bone mineral density or bone mass. And these are mostly before the age of 20, when we build 80 percent of our bones at this stage. And then there is more opportunity to build this up before we reach our peak bone mass, which is around age 35. After this, our bone mass does slowly decline, although there is plenty we can do about that. And it is possible to build your bones after this age too, but it does become harder, especially for women as your oestrogen starts to drop off with perimenopause. But as I said, it's never too late to support yourself in the best way that you can. So what can you do after you've received an osteoporosis diagnosis? If you've already been diagnosed with osteoporosis, it's all about keeping what you've got, maintaining your bone mass where it is, and slowing down bone loss as much as possible. So let me share with you an inspiring story of my client who came to me at age 75 with osteoporosis diagnosed already. She was diagnosed after discovering she had spinal fractures when she was investigated her chronic back pain. And when we talked, she told me she'd sailed through menopause without being aware of any symptoms. Although when we did chat further, it turns out there were quite a few signs there. But the awareness back then wasn't there. When she was in her 50s, in her 40s, it just wasn't there, which is why I advocate so much for education around us understanding our bodies, especially around our menopause care. But there's no point looking too far back, so moving forward, she told me she couldn't take the commonly prescribed bisphosphonate type medications. She had some kidney problems, this meant that this wasn't suitable for her, but she was worried about losing her independence. She was needing two sticks to walk and experienced pain on a daily basis, but now she's walking around fully independent, freely and easily, with visiting the garden centre. Being her favorite pastime. And when we first started working together, her biggest worry was causing herself further fractures and being scared of doing the wrong thing. She wondered if she needed to be extra careful with how she moved. And this just added to her daily fear. Can you relate to this? She was absolutely not alone in these worries. This is something I come across on a daily basis. But that is why I'm here, to help you understand how you can support yourself. So here's what we did to get her feeling strong and confident and seeing her bone mineral density maintained on her latest DEXA scan. Within my coaching, I always focus on three main areas. That is the move, connect and nourish pillars of my coaching. And this is what we applied across to my client to support her. It's not just about one thing. We need to look at this from a few different angles, but not too many. We can keep this super simple. So we started with having a look at what she was eating. Now, if you are a regular listener, you may already remember that I do like to use the available evidence to inform how I work with my clients. Of course, I say inform because I don't follow guidelines to the letter like they are rules, because this often doesn't cover individual needs. However, we can. Use this as a great foundation to support our knowledge going forward and how I can support my clients in a way that does follow that evidence base and still is tailored to what they need. So this is what I did with my client here. So we looked at her eating style and there was a few little tweaks that needed to be made, but not too much. So focusing on the Mediterranean diet, rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, plenty of protein. We applied this across and had a look at how that matched up with what she was currently eating. Because this diet style is known to be beneficial for overall health and bone strength. So for her, the protein intake was a little on the low side, so we made a couple of tweaks to increase this in her diet. We looked at swapping her usual yogurts for some higher protein versions. And she does like to have a glass of milk or a protein shake prior to her training. And overall, we just made sure that she was having three balanced meals per day. And inside of that, we gave vitamin D some focus. Now this is incredibly important for supporting bone health. It's what helps us use the calcium that we have in our diet and we have in our body to help lay those foundations of bone mass down. So this is incredibly supportive. As we are trying to maintain current bone mass, replacing what is being lost on a daily basis, so that we don't end up with an overall negative. And we did this by making sure she got out every day. Now we're UK based, so the sun over here doesn't exactly support us on a daily basis, but there is more. To getting outside for fresh air and sunlight and just the vitamin D. So it's worthwhile doing anyway. It's a great way to regulate sleep. And who doesn't feel better after a bit of a walk outside? So this was one reason we did that. But the other reason we focused on the vitamin D was for her bone health. And we did introduce a supplement because looking at her nutrition and how the sun is over in the UK, she wasn't going to be getting enough. But we did this alongside her agreement and with her healthcare provider. Of course. With myself being a qualified dietitian, I'm a little bit more able to make those slightly more specific recommendations, but again, still always in alongside the current healthcare system. I don't like to just do all these things alone. So once we checked off on how she was nourishing her body, we had a look at how she was moving, and we got her started doing some resistance training. And we aim to do this twice per week, and we follow the principles of strong, steady, and straight, which I have done a podcast on that in more detail a few episodes ago, which I will link into the show notes. But following these principles, we managed to get her training in the gym once per week. And then she did some exercises at home for in between. So she wasn't able to get into the gym twice per week, but we managed to do this with a combination, giving her access to weights, but also making sure she was moving well at home on a daily basis. And we do this following the strong, steady and straight principles to make sure we are developing the muscles because when the muscles pull on the bones, this is what tells the bones to stick around. We also look after spinal health, and this is important for everybody, but especially for this client with a history of spinal fractures. And of course improving balance to reduce any risk of falls. So one of the ways you can support yourself when you have osteoporosis already is to reduce that risk of further fractures by reducing the risk of falling over. So we tailored this to her current abilities after an assessment to make sure she was super safe and that The exercises chosen were going to be effective for her. And this is what's important. We don't want to be applying a cookie cutter approach to everybody. Not all exercises are appropriate for every person at that particular time, in those particular circumstances. And that is why we like to always start with an assessment, having a look what their risks are, but also how we can keep safe. And making sure we're not wasting time. We want to make sure that valuable time that we use up that comes out of our life is having the effect that we want it to. I'm not here to waste time. And next we worked on managing her stress and confidence building. So we know what can happen when we get a diagnosis, especially around our health, especially around osteoporosis where there may have already been a fracture and this may have been upsetting and really challenging to overcome. So this can give you a quite a big knock to the confidence and it had done so for my client too. She experienced Nearly two years of pain, a loss of ability to walk as she usually could, alongside that fear of not quite knowing what to do and worrying that she was going to make things worse. So her confidence for movement was not feeling too great. She was really worried about how she could ever possibly do anything in the gym or any kind of exercise when all she'd done her whole life. She'd been on a bike and done a bit of keep fit at her local leisure centre sports hall. I remember those days going along with my mum to her keep fit days and going to the sports hall. So absolute credit to her for keeping active with her life. Even just a decade ago, the encouragement and the information just wasn't there. The support just hasn't been there for us, especially as women, to encourage us and support us to get into the gym and to lift weights. So to know how we can do resistance training at home. I struggled myself. I didn't get to do any of this till I was about 34. So I totally get. How this can happen and where this leads your confidence. So this is what we worked on with her. We worked on her stress management and building a confidence through some simple breathing exercises. This was to help her connect with her inner stability and reduce any anxiety related to her osteoporosis diagnosis and any fears of movement that she had. And this allowed her to start building Good movement habits and walking with confidence at home as well. As I mentioned, I have done deeper podcast episodes on all of these areas. So I will link those into the show notes. So after you've listened to this, head over there and go and find them. If you want to. Do a deeper dive into any of these areas, but there you go. The three areas to focus on to support yourself with osteoporosis, whether or not you're on medication. Now, if you'd like more support on how to do this for yourself, please contact me on hello@carlykillencoaching.com. com or come and find me and say hello on Instagram. I'm the Strong Bones coach over there. I would love to hear from you, how I can support you. So I hope you found that supportive for you this week. Please do not sit in fear or worry, there is always something you can do to support yourself, whether you're already diagnosed with osteoporosis or osteopoenia, or you just want to know you're doing the best for your bone health so you can have a fracture free future. So please know you can always reach out for help from me, and it's never too late to get started. So until next week, stay strong and take care.