Belinda Beck, founder of The Bone Clinic and a leading authority on exercise physiology and bone health, delves into the science of osteoporosis, bone density, and the lifelong importance of maintaining skeletal health. In this episode, she explains how the foundation for strong bones is established during childhood, offering valuable advice for parents on optimizing bone health for their kids. She also explores how bone remodeling occurs throughout life, driven by activity, nutrition, and hormones. Belinda highlights the power of resistance training in improving bone strength, even for those at risk of bone loss, and emphasizes the role of essential vitamins and minerals in maintaining bone health. She shares practical strategies, backed by research, for preventing fractures and combating osteoporosis.

Subscribe on: APPLE PODCASTS | RSS | GOOGLE | OVERCAST | STITCHER

YouTube video

We discuss:

  • Belinda’s journey into bone health research and training [2:45];
  • The physiology of bone, and how bones adapt to mechanical loading [8:15];
  • Bone development from birth to adulthood, why early life is a crucial period, the functions of osteoblasts and osteoclasts, and gender differences in BMD [14:00];
  • How parents can optimize their children’s bone health through diet (calcium and vitamin D), sunlight exposure, and physical activity [27:30];
  • The best sports and activities for promoting bone health, weight training for kids, and advice for parents [36:30];
  • The impact of corticosteroid use on bone health in children and strategies to minimize the negative effects [48:30];
  • Advice for people in middle age to preserve bone density: physical activity and bone-loading exercises [52:00];
  • Bone loss during the menopause transition for women: hormone replacement therapy and other strategies to mitigate BMD losses [59:30];
  • Interpreting the bone mineral density results from a DEXA scan: T-score, Z-score, and more [1:03:00];
  • The LIFTMOR study: testing the effects of heavy weightlifting on bone health in postmenopausal women with low bone density [1:10:15];
  • Profound benefits of weight training outside of BMD improvements: exploring the broader impacts on patients in the LIFTMOR study [1:19:30];
  • Guidance for people wanting to use exercise designed to improve their bone health [1:29:30]; and
  • More.

§

Sign up to receive Peter's expertise in your inbox

Sign up to receive the 5 tactics in my Longevity Toolkit, followed by non-lame, weekly emails on the latest strategies and tactics for increasing your lifespan, healthspan, and well-being (plus new podcast announcements).

Belinda’s journey into bone health research and training [2:45]

  • Belinda was a runner and field hockey player, and she constantly suffered from sore shins and nobody could help her
    • Or tell her why she was getting them, much less how to prevent them or make them better
  • In high school she knew she wanted to find out what was going on, and that’s where her research started 
  • In her Master’s she looked at tibial stress injuries: it became clear very, very early that this is a bone injury
    • This is not what everybody was saying: 2 hours posterior pulling on the border of that was all bunkum
  • That set her down the path of figuring out what are the mechanical signals that stimulate bone to adapt to mechanical loading, pursuit of Wolff’s Law  
    • Why does a change in mechanical loading cause the bone to change shape in this amazing way? 
  • As soon as she discovered bone did that, she was hooked (it’s an incredible tissue)
  • She did an animal study for her PhD and quickly realized that that was not something she wanted to do for the rest of her life because it involved killing animals constantly
  • She went to Stanford and did a postdoc and that’s where she learned about clinical trials

She realized that osteoporosis is the greatest burden when it comes to bone problems 

Being an exercise head, that’s something that I wanted to figure out ‒ exactly what was the ideal exercise program to assist people living with osteoporosis.”‒ Belinda Beck 

  • Before the podcast, Peter figured out that they overlapped at Stanford for the entire 3 years of her postdoc (he was in medical school)

Belinda’s clinical practice and research 

  • She is not a clinician
  • She’s an exercise physiologist and she’s never had a personal clinical load
    • Although exercise physiology is one of the allied health professions in Australia
  • She came back to Australia to an academic position and has been teaching anatomy her whole professional career, but also continued bone research
  • She’s a professor at Griffith University on the Gold Coast in Queensland

Her career triangulated onto this question: there must be a way to load people who have osteoporosis in such a way that they can grow bone because everybody had been saying we couldn’t do that because their bones were so fragile 

  • She’ll come back to the actual trials
  • She realized, “The nature of the exercise was not really safe for just anybody. And it needed to be applied in a certain way and very specifically. And it needed to be applied by somebody who really knew what they were doing because this is not a program that should be done unsupervised if you’re at high risk of fracture. And the only way to do that was to implement it in a clinic.
  • Now, it’s hard enough to convince doctors who’ve been telling osteoporotic patients for years that they should not lift anything heavy
    • But to tell somebody in a clinic to start doing this exercise, she knew that was never going to happen
  • This is why she set up The Bone Clinic 
    • It’s a clinical and translational research facility where this program is implemented
    • Every patient that comes in is a research participant, and they agree to share their data 

Patients at The Bone Clinic 

  • The initial appointment is 2.5 hours where baseline data is collected
  • Then every year thereafter, patients are tested again with the same thing to see if the exercise program works in the real world 
  • Patients are also advised on things like diet
  • This is not a clinical trial as there is no control group

She has gathered an enormous amount of data 

 

The physiology of bone, and how bones adapt to mechanical loading [8:15]

A basic way to describe bones is according to their shape 

{end of show notes preview}

Would you like access to extensive show notes and references for this podcast (and more)?

Check out this post to see an example of what the substantial show notes look like. Become a member today to get access.


Belinda Beck, Ph.D.

Belinda Beck earned a Bachelor of Human Movement Studies at the University of Queensland. She then attended the University of Oregon where she earned a Master’s in Sports Medicine and Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology. She did her postdoctoral training at Stanford University School of Medicine with Dr. Robert Marcus in the Department of Endocrinology, Gerontology, and Metabolism. Dr. Beck is currently a Professor in the School of Health Sciences & Social Work and member of the Menzies Health Institute Queensland at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia and the Director of The Bone Clinic in Brisbane, Australia. 

Dr. Beck’s research focuses on the influence of mechanical loading on bone. She has worked for more than 20 years to develop evidence-based, safe and effective management and prevention for osteoporosis, stress fracture, and osteoarthritis. Dr. Beck has authored over 100 scientific papers, and presented almost 200 abstracts at conferences and symposia nationally and internationally. Among these, results of the clinical trials LIFTMOR, LIFOFOR-M, and MEDEX-OP re-established the benchmark of exercise as therapy for osteoporosis and low bone mass. She established the Bone Clinic and ONERO research program to license practitioners in these interventions to prevent osteoporotic fracture. [The Bone Clinic]

Become a premium member

MEMBERSHIP INCLUDES

  • Exclusive Ask Me Anything episodes
  • Best in class podcast Show Notes
  • Premium Articles on longevity
  • Full access to The Qualys podcast
  • Quarterly Podcast Summary episodes

Related Content

Free Article

Oldies-But-Goodies, December 2024 Edition

Free Article

Calming the concern over exercise duration and coronary artery calcification

QPS

Peter’s key takeaways on bone health, calorie restriction, gene editing and more

Ep. #325

Disclaimer: This blog is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this blog or materials linked from this blog is at the user’s own risk. The content of this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard, or delay in obtaining, medical advice for any medical condition they may have, and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

14 Comments

  1. Christopher Dennis says:

    The Book “Built to Move” was interesting cause It said just sitting on the floor can do wonders and they cited Asian culture that still do. It’s been awhile since I read it. But it had good stuff like this!

  2. Christopher Dennis says:

    Oh, and ask Jo Ko about the “Filipino Squat” it is famous on Guam. Older construction workers full squat eating lunch. Some places in the PI you “Drop a Deuce” in a hole which I prefer so I don’t have to deal with the seat. Squating to dump is more natural too right?

  3. Barbara Boyd says:

    I would be very interested in thoughts on the use of anti-resporptive drugs, exercise, and bone quality. As I understand it, while these drugs inhibit osteoclast (resorptive) activity, they also inhibit osteoblast (formation) activity. So if you take these drugs but also do load-bearing exercise, does it have negligible impact on bone formation because osteoblast activity is inhibited? Over time is bone quality actually reduced?

  4. Sandi Brill says:

    Thank you so much for this! I’m a 72 year old woman who’s been doing resistance training on and off for over 40 years. I am osteopenic ( partly the result of Graves’ disease and synthroid) i deadlift every week usually 5 sets of 8 starting at 115 and usually ending at 185; down from my best of 205 x3. I cannot tell you how many doctors have told be to stop because of the danger!! I have stopped spinal loading and moved to belt squats ( 386 lbs btw) but have otherwise completely ignored the doctors on this topic

  5. Heidi Kaufman says:

    I broke my left ankle recently and my whole left side has been affected terribly. Having osteoporosis has been such an obstacle to my recovery. It’s had a domino effect and has put me in pain I’ve never experienced before. Before this, I was exercising every day however, I had anorexia as a child as was said in the lecture, osteoporosis is really a childhood disease. There’s so much more to say, but I appreciate the interview with Belinda Beck.

  6. Fish Fixation branded fish gear says:

    This was a valuable read, thanks for taking the time.

  7. Terri L Willert says:

    I really love this discussion as a post menopausal athletic women.
    I did take HRT, cross trained trail runner, cyclist, and weight trained.
    As an over 60 female now diagnosed with breast cancer I’m offered overies removal and aromatase inhibitors! Not great for bone density.
    I now have osteoporosis. Live in CA where I get plenty of sunshine
    (vitamin D).

    What can we do to I maintain bone density once lost? Please discuss.

  8. Tracy de Swiet says:

    I would like to shares this with our pediatrics department if that’s ok. Please also interview Dr. R. Keith McCormick and Dr. Doug Lucas.

  9. Logan Mancuso says:

    “The vitamin D deficiency cutoff is 30 ng/mL and 50 ng/mL is considered sufficient (other people say that 75 ng/mL is sufficient); in between that, you would have insufficiency ”

    Where exactly is she getting these number from? These are quite higher than either the American Endocrine Society’s clinical practice guidelines (≥30 ng/mL for Sufficiency) and the National Academy of Medicine’s guidelines (≥ 20 ng/mL for Sufficiency). Neither of these clinical society’s levels are close to the reported levels Belinda claims. Its fine if she disagrees with the current guidelines but following either of her such high thresholds would be practice changing in my outpatient clinic given I rarely see 25-OH Vit-d levels >40.

  10. Emily Perry says:

    Thanks so much for this brilliant piece bringing much-needed wisdom to a hugely important area for women – of all ages. I’m a 41 year old former marathon runner, diagnosed with Pregnancy Associated Osteoporosis (PAO) after the birth of my second child (aged 38). Had a DEXA of -5.2 at the time & 10 vertebral fractures. There is a community of young women globally who viscerally know how much osteoporosis can rob you of vitality — and how strength training can get you back your life. I tell women, especially younger ones, how critical it is to lift (safely, but heavily).

  11. Kathy Doig says:

    I walk for aerobic exercise. Would adding weight like rucking increase the bone benefit? I typically avoid jumping but I do low impact step and floor aerobics. Do these offer benefits for bone because of the lateral movements differ from walking?

  12. Candy Cumming says:

    Hi,
    I enjoyed this.
    Turned osteoporosis around by weight training. Then I hit a plateau… I started using Algaecal Bone Builder pack and have been seen consistent improvements in bone mass ever since! I am 77.

    Check out Algaecal

  13. Rachel Sweet says:

    Loved this! Than you for this terrific topic.
    Two questions:
    1) If walking isn’t necessarily considered the best exercise to promote bone health, does rucking?
    2) I believe I know this answer, but would like some additional clarity. Where does lower impact, resistance training fit into this? TRX, Pvolve, Pilates, Yoga? Is it all about growing muscle with heavy weights, or does anything that promotes muscle growth count?

    Thank you.

  14. Geoff Moyes says:

    Re: Bone Health – advice children shouldn’t lift weights.
    From memory, I read a synopsis of a study (pre?) First World War.
    It was on health impact of children attending the School of Gymnastics / Circus, in China.
    [My impression was: bring in a child with talent, work them hard, if they get injured just send them home.]
    There were high levels of loading during exercise and stretching.
    Cases of Avulsion Fracture were common.
    People jumped to the conclusion that exercise is dangerous for children.