Welcome back to the podcast. have you ever tried to do something to help someone and it's kind of backfired? I remember when I was pregnant with, I think it must have been my first child, so was about 24. He's nearly 17 now, so I'll tell you how old I am.

I was at a car place. I think my dad was dropping me off to have an MOT or maybe we're picking up a new car. I can't quite remember why, but I saw this lady coming up the ramp into the showroom. She had two sticks. So I thought, ⁓ that would be nice for me to go and open the door because she'd probably struggle. So I went over to open the door, but as I did so, she then fell into

the car showroom. She yelled at me because I opened the door for her. I got really upset because I was pregnant and really emotional and also quite young. Now I would handle things differently. But she was there laying on the floor, everyone was crying around her and I was like, my God, I've just caused somebody to fall over. So I was crying because I was hormonal and

I just didn't know what to do because obviously I was just trying to be nice and then she had fallen over. She was shouting to say that she had balanced herself in a particular way so that she could open the door and because I opened it then she overbalanced because she had prepared herself. I mean it wasn't my fault at all and if it was now then I would be like, sorry, I was trying to help you. Obviously I didn't mean you'd fall over. She was fine and after a bit of to do she was like...

I'm fine. was just, I just overbalanced. But it did kind of stick with me, as you can see, like nearly 20 years down the line, I can still put myself in that situation. The fact that I was trying to help her. I can't remember how old she was, but she certainly was using a couple of sticks. But it's really important as we get older to think about balance and strength.

and how we can keep ourselves fit and able. Now, obviously, I didn't know this lady's story, whether she had had some joint replacements, whether she had injured herself. I seem to remember she didn't have a very good gait, but I don't, that's walking, if you don't know what I by gait. So her walking pattern wasn't great. She had these two sticks and her balance obviously was not good. But it caught me thinking that actually we really need to think about

what happens as we get older. There's no reason unless you have a really big accident that you have lots of injuries that you can't recover from, there is no reason why we have to get less mobile as we get older. Obviously, we're going to stiffen up and we might not be as flexible as we were in our younger years, but there's no reason why we have to rely on sticks, rely

on other ways to get around. There's always exceptions. So if you've had a stroke, if you've had an injury, there will be reasons why your mobility is less and why you may need aids. But if it's just due to aging, we need to think about this earlier in our lives. Our bones, particularly with women, are peak

bone mass, so how strong our bones are, the strongest they are is around 30. And from then it decreases. And then when we hit menopause, it has a steeper decrease. So we need to be thinking this not only for ourselves, but also for our children, because the thing that will build a higher bone mass is actually

doing activities, getting outside, exercising. But unfortunately, if your children are anything like mine, well, certainly my son spends most of his time sat on the sofa playing computer games. However, my daughter, she goes to the gym, she does ballet, she comes with me and we do theatre and things together. So she's quite active in what she does. quite lazy in many other ways, but she is building up her bone strength.

more than my son sitting watching the telly. He will walk places but that's about as much as he does. women are more prone to osteoporosis. So this is when our bones become, I say thinner but more fragile. It sometimes calls like brittle bones but it means that the density becomes less.

Now there's different stages. We have our good bone density, then we have osteoporosis at the other end, and then in the middle we have osteopenia. So this is where the bones become slightly fragile, but not as much as the osteoporosis. So luckily, this lady that fell into the car showroom didn't break anything. So I imagine that she didn't have osteoporosis, but had she done?

due to her poor balance, then she could quite easily have fractured a hip. And fracturing your hip, there is quite a high mortality rate after that. After two years, quite a lot of people die due to a fractured hip. So the main thing that we can do is to ensure that we get our bone density as high as we can in our earlier years, and then make sure that we keep up our mobility and our balance as we get older.

So, to increase our bone density or to maintain it as much as we can, we need to be doing weight-bearing exercise. So, that could be anything from walking, not so much cycling and swimming because that isn't as much weight-bearing, but anything where you're on your feet moving, it could be keep fit, it could be going to the gym.

It could be coming to a chair Pilates class or any resistance training. Keeping the bones nice and strong and the muscles strong is really key to keeping us fitter as we get older. The other thing we really need to improve on is our balance. Now I've seen many older people as a physio over the years and I did a community

rotation when I was a junior physio and you go out and see all of these older people in their homes, that their balance is really not good and that they've fallen and then they fracture and then they're in hospital and then you're trying to get them out into their home or there's lots of falls risks around the home, so loads of rugs or things that they could trip over. mean, my home is...

bit of an obstacle course because it's messy but it keeps my balance on check because I have to jump over things. But we need to keep ourselves fit as we get older, because women particularly, due to that decrease in estrogen as we hit menopause. So actually, when our periods stop, we have this rapid decline in our bone density, because estrogen is bone protective. It's also brain

apart everything else protective, but particularly bone protective. So we need to make sure that we are doing our weight bearing exercise. We are doing our resistance training and we need to reduce the risks of falls as well. So working on balance exercise as part of your general exercise regime. Now resistance exercise is going to be great because that's going to work all of the muscles.

Hopefully, if you're covering the whole body, so do some core work, some legs and arms. So if you're able to do something like Pilates or yoga, that is great for flexibility, for strength, for core work. If like some of my older clients coming to my chair class is more suitable, that still gives you a workout. I still do some work in standing. We do quite a lot of balance exercises.

because that is really important. So it could be as simple as standing on one leg when you brush your teeth. That helps to work your balance. So standing on one leg and then doing something else at the same time. It kind of works on your proprioception so that your brain is working in two different things. So we're brushing our teeth, we're busy thinking about that, and then we're gonna stand on one leg. So that is gonna challenge. And any movement, so it could be standing on one leg and then

turning your head side to side, or it could be standing one leg and trying to touch something or throwing a ball against a wall. Depending on how fit and able you are, you can make it a lot more difficult. So if you are just coming into perimenopause, or even no signs of it yet, I would just be getting yourself as fit and well as we head towards that age, so that you don't have as many symptoms, so your bones stay nice and strong.

And if you're planning to help somebody, try not to be disheartened if it backfires on you like it did for me. I was just trying to do something nice. And like I say, now that I'm a bit older, then I would have probably dealt with it a little bit better. I can't control how that person responded or what happened, but what I could do is control myself and change how I respond to it. But making sure you are keeping yourself.

fit in well or as much as you can do. Bone health really needs to be in your mind and consideration as early as you can think of. as I, in your 20s and 30s and your teens years even, if you can try and build up as much bone strength as you can, if you're past that now, that's fine. You can still maintain what you've got, but I wouldn't leave it until...

you hit 60 or 70 and you get that diagnosis of osteoporosis and then decide, I better do some weight bearing exercise now. It's still important, but you'll get much better results if you think of it younger. And if you listened to the episode I did a few episodes ago about the water main, about actually if you can fix things sooner, then they don't get worse. So we don't want just

That drain bursting, just if you left it, left it and didn't do anything about it, it's going to make things worse and worse. If we start to lose our balance a little bit, if we trip over things or you just feel a bit unsteady, you need to really be working on your strength and your balance, proprioception, and just sort it out as soon as possible. Don't let it get worse. Don't get to the point where you have to rely.

on a stick or a walking aid to stop you from wobbling. And if you're younger, sort it out now, get yourself nice and strong, get those bones as strong as you can before we hit the point where we need more help. If we do it younger, we're preparing ourselves. It's like if you had a marathon. If you were training for a marathon, you wouldn't, probably not, go straight and run the marathon on the day. We're thinking that perimenopause is that marathon.

would probably be doing some training beforehand. So ideally, we'd be doing some training, getting yourself as fit as possible in order to smooth your journey into perimenopause, which is what I'm doing. I'm getting myself as fit as well as I can, eating the best food so that hopefully with everything I know, my journey will be smoother running into it.

I've still got all of my symptoms of my chronic fatigue, so I'm trying to improve those as well. And it does make a difference. All the things I'm doing makes me feel a little bit better from that as well. But it's just really working on it before it becomes a problem.

A lot of women have a fear of falling and that can be a big effect on your life and it stops you from doing things, particularly as we get older. So don't let yourself get to that point. Improve your balance and your bone health now and hopefully you will never get to the point where you fall when someone opens a door for you.

So until next time, take care and choose one thing to do from today's episode that can take you that one step further. Bye bye.