Women's Fear of Bulking Up Leads to Crippling Bone Disease

It's amazing how many women today have osteoporosis, also known as brittle bone disease. This is one of the most preventable diseases known to man; and one of the easiest, if not THE easiest, way to prevent it is to exercise with weights. And I don't mean the pink 2-pound dumbbells, either, save for rehabilitation from injuries.

When I see a woman with osteoporosis, the first thing I think is, "She could have prevented that had she not been so stubborn and naïve about lifting weights. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, she still believed that weight lifting would bulk her up and make her look manly. So she never took to weight workouts. And now she's paying for it dearly."

One need not be a doctor to recognize osteoporosis. This disease in its advanced stages can be identified by a young child. In case you don't know what this looks like, it's when a woman, usually elderly (but they can be younger, I assure you), is hunched over with a humpback, or hump or hunch on her upper back. She isn't leaning over. Her spinal column is molded into this position. She cannot straighten out.

Her head juts forward. Her neck is NOT vertical. It's closer to a 30-degree or less angle. Her torso is very short, relative to her overall height. She may appear to be all legs, even if she's short, because her torso has collapsed and shrunken, because her spinal column has lost so much bone, that it could no longer support her.

The legs and arms are scrawny and the muscle appears to be wasted away. A comprehensive weight lifting program could have prevented this.

Popping calcium supplements is not enough. Neither is estrogen replacement therapy. A woman must engage in rigorous weight-bearing exercise. This news has been out there for at least two decades, as a way to prevent osteoporosis. So why do so many women not lift weights? Because they still think they'll bulk up. And it is they, who will pay the price as time marches on.