Bone Health Revolution: Why Walking Isn't Enough & What Really Works with Dr Tracey Clissold

BONE HEALTH REVOLUTION: THE 3-MINUTE SOLUTION FOR LIFELONG STRENGTH

In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Orlena speaks with bone health expert Dr. Tracey Clissold about the "silent epidemic" affecting millions of women and the surprisingly simple solution that takes just minutes a day.

Did you know we only have until age 30 to build the skeleton that must last us a lifetime? After that, we begin losing bone density—with losses accelerating dramatically during menopause when women can lose up to 20% of their bone mass in just a few years. This hidden decline puts two-thirds of women at risk for life-altering fractures as they age.

The good news? Dr. Clissold reveals her groundbreaking research showing how specific "bone-jarring" movements performed for just 2-3 minutes daily can increase bone density by 3-5%—effectively reversing years of natural bone loss. And contrary to popular belief, walking and most other exercises don't create enough force to stimulate this bone growth.

You'll also discover the critical nutritional triad supporting bone health: proper calcium intake (most women only get 70% of what they need), optimal protein consumption for both muscle and bone strength, and the often-overlooked vitamin D connection.

Whether you're 30 or 60, this conversation offers actionable strategies to strengthen your skeleton and prevent the devastating fractures that can derail healthy aging. Listen now to transform your bone health in just minutes a day!

For more information about the OSTEO-GAINS Bone Health Program, please visit our Website and Instagram. Also, check out our FAQ’s and click here to download the OSTEO-GAINS Bone Health App from the Apple Store, or Google Play Store.

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Transcript

Dr Orlena: hello. Welcome to Fit and Fabulous with me, Dr. Orlena. I'm super excited today 'cause we're going to be talking all about bone health and bone strength as we get older. I'm super excited to welcome Tracy Clissold. Hello and welcome all the way from New Zealand.

Dr Tracey Clissold: Thank you so much, Dr. Orlena. Yeah, I'm excited too. I'm 5:00 AM in the morning right now, so hopefully.

Dr Orlena: Oh my goodness. I didn't realize it was quite so early. I knew it was morning, but I didn't realize it was. So thank you so much for getting up. 

Dr Tracey Clissold: Get up early. I love the morning. But daylight savings has put us into darkness at this time now, but normally I'd be out having a run or having a surf or something like that. 

Dr Orlena: Oh, surfing sounds lovely. We were talking about the ocean before we started recording, but I live on the Mediterranean and if you are a mouse, you might be able to surf when it's windy, but otherwise there's no surfing here. It's flat as a [00:01:00] pancake. And I always joke in the middle of the summer, it is literally like a mill pond.

And then sometimes there's waves and my friends are all like, we can't swim when there's waves. And I'm like, look, I'm swimming.

Dr Tracey Clissold: different lives. I there's pros and cons isn't there? But, 

Dr Orlena: yeah. So I would love to surf, but yeah, clearly just not happening here. So yeah. Before we start, tell us about what are your, I call them activities that light you up. So your movement that lights you up, what are they for you?

Dr Tracey Clissold: Running's my number one, so I love running and run Running's been a lot of my sort of history and I've run marathons for.

Dr Orlena: Wow.

Dr Tracey Clissold: 30 years or so. I'm represented New Zealand as a marathon runner. So I've won most of the New Zealand marathons and some Australian marathons and a few other internationals.

So that was that was my twenties and thirties. But I love running still. I'm not a fast runner now, but I love running off. Off trail. Heading up Mount Nui, which is called it's a lovely little place right on the ocean. So I like to do that and [00:02:00] run along the beach and in the bush. So it gives me my absolute, it's my happy place. So running is

Dr Orlena: Yeah, exactly. Your movement that lights you up. I can tell. I think everybody needs a movement that lights you up and I know that we should have certain movements for doing certain things, and one of them we're gonna talk about today, but I just think. When you have a movement that lights you up, it's just so easy to do.

You look forward to it and plan your life around it and make it your number one thing, and it just becomes easy. Okay. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about what you do and who you are, just so people know?

Dr Tracey Clissold: Okay. I have been an academic a lecturer for around 30 years. So a long time now that I look back on that journey. So I've taught at a lot of different, universities over my time and my areas of expertise, sports nutrition. So I love working with athletes and teams and coaches. Exercise physiology, so exercise science and also population health and [00:03:00] wellbeing type papers as well. So that's the area that I've taught historically and contemp in the. Yeah. Now as well. I do research as well, so I've had a really interesting research journey. So my, what we're gonna talk about today, the Woman's bone health is a real passion research area for me. So that's another I suppose career. Part of who I am. I'm also an ex-athlete and I've got two beautiful children, so I have a, a. Big boy. My son Taylor Blue is 24 and my

Dr Orlena: Wow.

Dr Tracey Clissold: 12, so I 

Dr Orlena: Oh.

Dr Tracey Clissold: have a little one as well. A little hip hop dancer. So yeah, I have a pretty busy life trying to manage all of those things. Yeah.

Dr Orlena: Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. And I think that's who we are speaking to today. Somebody who is busy, like most people are busy. My goodness. We could talk about so many things, but we are gonna talk about bone health today because it is super, super important. And it's super important for lots of reasons. But partly what we are looking at is leading a [00:04:00] long and healthy life and feeling vibrant as we get older.

So can you just talk a little bit about the natural progression of what happens? Like why is it important that we pay attention to our bone health?

Dr Tracey Clissold: Yeah, I suppose one of the really important reasons is because it's a silent epidemic, so we don't really know that our bones are getting weaker and we are losing bone mineral density and we have a finite amount of time to grow our bone. So we really only have 30 years to grow the bone that in the skeleton that's gonna see us out for the rest of our lives. And a lot of people don't know that. And I suppose if.

Dr Orlena: I.

Dr Tracey Clissold: if we peel that back even further, we say actually for women, we've grown most of our skeleton by the time we're 18 years of old. So about 92% of our entire bone mineral density is laid down by the age of 18. And then we've got us up to the age of 30 to top that up. And we're

Dr Orlena: Okay.

Dr Tracey Clissold: that motivated in those years to actually build that skeleton and to invest in our bone health future, I suppose you could say. And then [00:05:00] from 30 to 50, so basically once we reach peak bone mass, right up until menopause, we start slowly losing bone about half a percent. Of our total bone mineral density a year up to the age of about 51, which is considered the average age of menopause. then at menopause we start to have this massive loss of bone. The average woman over the five to seven years of menopause can lose 20% of her entire bone mineral density.

Dr Orlena: Wow.

Dr Tracey Clissold: that acceleration of bone loss, it ties into the fact that estrogen is withdrawn at that time and it plays a really important role in bone health. I suppose, yeah,

Dr Orlena: And yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: I was gonna say that that the other little issue I suppose that weighs in there is that if women suppress their menstrual cycle during those years with us growing that bone, that can also have a detrimental effect on that skeleton that they have to last them the rest of their lives.

So someone who is suffering from a amenorrhea. So if [00:06:00] they have maybe got into low energy availability for some reason and we know that's quite prevalent in society, then that also can have a negative impact on on your bone health. 

Dr Orlena: Okay. And just going back to bone density and thinking, okay so we've got we haven't got enough bone density. Why is that important? What are the consequences of not having enough

Bone density?

Dr Tracey Clissold: tells a big part of the bone strength story. So it's not everything, but it's a big part of it. It's maybe 70% of the strength of our bone. And so what happens is once we actually start to lose that mineral out of the bone, we become more susceptible to fracture. And so that's what happens.

And we have these terrible statistics in the western world that say one out of three women, or sorry, two out of three women can suffer an osteoporotic fracture from the age of. 60. And the stats aren't so bad for men. It's more like one in five and some of the worldwide stats say one in 20 for men.

So it really is an issue and a disease state that and a risk for women [00:07:00] more than men that osteo product fracture that can be really debilitating. And we know that hip fracture, which is probably the most debilitating, people can not recover from that. They may not recover their

Dr Orlena: Yeah,

Dr Tracey Clissold: know they have poor bone health until they fall and fracture, so

Dr Orlena: yeah. And then it can be like this downward spiral. It's not like when you are younger and you break a bone and then you are on crutches for a little bit and then you get better and then you know, you might have some consequences afterwards. But generally, bones heal when you are younger. When you're older, it's that it can be that trigger of downward spiral and downward spiral in terms of all of your health and wellbeing and independence and just not goodness.

Dr Tracey Clissold: that's right. Yeah. And it is, it's something that I've heard others describe as a 30 year journey fueled by reduced bone mineral density and increased risk of fracture that terminates in this. [00:08:00] This fracture situation, but we don't know, it might be 60 when we have that fracture, but remember 30 is

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: reached our peak bone mass. So it's

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: loss, and most people aren't doing anything about that. that's mainly because

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: don't know there's things they can do about that. And so it's really about empowering people about what can you do to minimize those risks and have a fantastic, fabulous life, and

Dr Orlena: Yeah, perfect. Exactly, and that's what we're gonna talk about before we talk about what people can do in terms of movement. You talked about menopause and estrogen being an important factor in this. So are people who go on HRT, are they protected slightly or not?

Dr Tracey Clissold: There's not a lot of research in this space and what I have read, so it's not my area of expertise in there. There is potential. Absolutely. I. Because if you're thinking, what's the missing piece of the puzzle? What are, one of the missing pieces of the puzzle is estrogen. So if you're providing that sort of exogenously, then yeah, there's [00:09:00] it.

It definitely can help to minimize the or to, sticking plaster. One of the major issues, which is that withdrawal of estrogen. So estrogen basically blocks the breaking part of the bone remodeling cycle. So that's the role that, that HRT could play, especially if it's estrogen focus.

'cause not all HRT is the same. 

Dr Orlena: Okay. Yeah, so sometimes it's estrogen and progesterone, so you want, as long as you've got some estrogen in there, you are okay. Or potentially okay. Not okay, but potentially you're giving yourself a benefit, shall we say, a grain of sand, shall we say.

Dr Tracey Clissold: that's the thing, I suppose when, and I'm not an expert in that, in the pharmacology field, but certainly one of the things that needs to be weighed up is how people tolerate medications as well. 

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: I have expertise in is green prescription, so manipulating exercise, nutrition, those sorts of things.

But obviously there's a chance for cumulative effect on top of those things, [00:10:00] if we can write us.

Dr Orlena: So should we quickly talk about nutrition? That's, if you give us the what.

Dr Tracey Clissold: Okay, so I mean there's three things really that are important from a nutrition perspective for bone, and the first one we have to really talk about is calcium. So calcium is the mineral that makes up our bone. So if we are not getting enough calcium in our, daily, then that can be a factor that's going to interfere with our ability to grow optimal bone and to reach that peak bone mass.

In that first 30 years. And then to minimize losses as we age. Getting enough foods that contain calcium. So dairy products plant-based milks that are fortified with calcium nuts and seeds, green leafy vegetables. So we know that calcium can be achieved like the recommended daily intake, but whether women are doing that and what we do know from existing surveys is in most cases, women aren't getting enough calcium. So they might only

Dr Orlena: Really.

Dr Tracey Clissold: 70% of what they need. [00:11:00] And that, again, is something that we need to address. We can take calcium as a supplement. there have been.

Dr Orlena: Not to take supplements.

Dr Tracey Clissold: Yeah. Or some kind of people take things like supplements that are bone, or, for calcium it is, it's bone or it's muscle shells, that's what calcium is.

It's a structure of things that exist in nature. So it's, finding something natural that can help us with that calcium. But we can

Dr Orlena: And how much calcium. How much calcium do.

Dr Tracey Clissold: A thousand milligrams a day is really what we want. But once we're over 50, that actually goes up to about 1500 milligrams which is really quite difficult.

You have to be quite purposeful in trying to achieve that. If people tolerate dairy products and then having more milk and yogurt and those sorts of things. Cheese and like I said, the nuts and seeds, if you're plant-based, one of the issues can be that the milks that you switch out for. May not be fortified with calcium. So you have to read the label and

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: that you've got the same amount of [00:12:00] calcium so you, you're willing to get about 300 milligrams per sort of typical cup of milk. And that's what you can achieve with either of those options, but yeah.

Dr Orlena: I will be checking my soya milk when, I do eat dairy as well. And one thing I really like actually is quark. I dunno if everybody has quark, but it's a bit like yogurt, but it, everyone always talks about yogurt as being high protein. In Spain, Greek yogurt is not high protein, and so quark is.

Dr Tracey Clissold: Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr Orlena: but I.

Dr Tracey Clissold: Yeah, definitely check it. And I think you bring up a good point about the protein. There's so many more products that are protein fortified now. So a lot of our yogurts are high protein yogurts, and that's definitely a good focus for women. So what we know also is that as we age, we start to atrophy our muscles as well as our bones. And so getting enough protein in our diet should be a real focus for us as we age 

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: something that women just aren't. Getting right. And we know, there's some [00:13:00] fantastic literature out there like Dr. Stacey SIM's first authored position statement that talks about how important protein is that we, we should be aiming for around the high level of what. Is the recommendation for everyone. We usually think men need more protein than women, but relatively women need more protein than men. So

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: getting towards that sort of two grams per k to your body weight, a day of protein is a real good focus and target for women and getting,

Dr Orlena: I'm just trying to work my work out. My weights I already say 30, 30 grams per kilo. Sorry, 30 grams per meal, which works out about 90 words. But I think I say that just 'cause it's easy for people to remember, but obviously that isn't specific to your body weight.

Dr Tracey Clissold: Around that maybe between 1.5 and maybe 2.2 grams per kg body weight is a good sort of target based on best practice sports nutrition. 

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: yeah, most people will be falling short of that and thinking about how to actually spread that over [00:14:00] the day as well.

So not just having protein

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: the evening meal but getting doses of around that 20 grams of protein in each.

Dr Orlena: And talking about protein when we are plant-based. I'm personally plant-based. Is there a difference between plant proteins and meat proteins and, can we get our protein requirement by eating plants? Not necessarily entirely by eating plants but by that being a, contributing an amount.

Dr Tracey Clissold: you absolutely can. So plant-based is just as effective as and not. But there is a difference between the proteins. So the proteins in the animal kingdom are considered complete in terms of their essential amino acids. So those sort of eight or nine amino acids our body can't make. We can get that easily in the ratios that sustain life and growth from animal proteins like your eggs and your meat and and your dairy products, those sorts of things. But in plant-based we actually just have to get better combinations of things. So there are. Yeah. So beans are fantastic. Yeah, [00:15:00] absolutely. And quinoa is a grain that's considered to be essentially complete, but most things that we eat in the plant kingdom are just missing one of those essential amino acids, or the ratios are slightly out in terms of being called complete. But all we need to do is throw a couple of plant proteins together and then we get.

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: completeness, or over the day we just eat different plant proteins and then we

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: completeness. So yeah, it's absolutely possible. Yeah, probably the only

Dr Orlena: Okay. Perfect.

Dr Tracey Clissold: If you're looking at doses of things like your protein powders and things, if it's a whey protein powder, then that's the amount that you need to add is less than what you'd have to add for a soy isolate or a any other kind of pea protein that you might have.

Dr Orlena: So I, I have a vegan protein, but it's a mixture of different things and I hoped that meant that it would have different things, so it would be a complete protein. I have

Dr Tracey Clissold: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr Orlena: it the,[00:16:00] 

Dr Tracey Clissold: And aren't labels terrible? Like they don't actually make it conducive to read. So that's something that we could do better, isn't it? 'cause if we're asking people to be vigilant and read their labels, yet half the time you can't even find the label on a product. So you actually

Dr Orlena: Yeah, exactly.

Dr Tracey Clissold: And yeah, you have to do it a couple of times and then you don't have to keep doing it once you've.

Dr Orlena: But if you can choose, way is better. If you want to go for the vegan ones, then you can like, you might wanna do that for ethical reasons, but the way one is basically better if you can go for way.

Dr Tracey Clissold: I don't know if I would say it's better. I think once you have it in that the vegan or vegetarian form, it's already designed to be You might have to take 25 grams instead of 20 grams, and that's what the dose will be

Dr Orlena: Okay.

Dr Tracey Clissold: so it's already

Dr Orlena: Okay.

Dr Tracey Clissold: for you. So either way it's gonna be beneficial to your body. Yep,

Dr Orlena: Okay, perfect. So we've got calcium and protein. Is protein specifically for bones or was there something else to talk [00:17:00] about for bones?

Dr Tracey Clissold: important for bones, so every part of our body is protein, so collagen is our bone. It's made from protein. We do need to make sure that we are ticking off the right amount of protein and I think bones and muscles go very nicely together, our musculoskeletal system.

And one of the things that our bones need is the muscle pull on bone. So if we're aging and we're still getting good muscle pull on our bone, that's all. Connected to protein. So I think and for women, we know we, we don't have a lot of enough muscle in most cases and our muscle dictates our metabolic rate.

So the calorie cost of living, and as we age, we lose that muscle. And most women aren't using their muscles enough. So we are

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: that muscle as we age, that's affecting our need for calories. And then our body composition changes as we age. So protecting our muscle is indirectly protecting our bone, and it's also

Dr Orlena: Okay.

Dr Tracey Clissold: to age fabulously, so yeah, keeping us strong.

Dr Orlena: So

Dr Tracey Clissold: Yeah,

Dr Orlena: [00:18:00] nutrition

Dr Tracey Clissold: one is vitamin D. So vitamin

Dr Orlena: vitamin.

Dr Tracey Clissold: absolutely vital to that metabolism of bone as well. And that's something that we get predominantly from the sun. So the sun synthesizes the vitamin D we need, in our skin. But that's our UVB ray. and of course that's something that also is connected to risk for skin cancers and things like that. There's a couple of things that we have to weigh up There is, most people are trying to keep out of the sun because of the risk of things like aging and skin cancer and all that sort of stuff. But we need a certain amount, a dose to be able to produce that vitamin D and it might be that it's in a hot climate only six to seven minutes a day, over about 15% of our surface area of our skin. And that can just be our face and neck and. Arms but not with sunscreen on. So the sunscreen

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: that UVB. So you know, if we can get that sun at sensible times, pre 10 and post four and depending on where you live. So that might not be practical in some [00:19:00] climates, but in the winter we actually need, up to two hours of sun on our skin to get the same amount. And so therefore what we are finding is that people aren't getting enough in the summer to ride them out through the winters. And there's more and more. Incidents of vitamin D deficiency in countries that have plenty of sun. 

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: to think about and it's a, maybe it's a more difficult one to navigate for some people, but, you can also get vitamin D from food it, but it's in food

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: fat, so it's a fat soluble vitamin.

So you'll get it in things like your egg yolk and your full fat dairy products and things like that. But whether people are consuming enough in food. That might be an issue. So it's.

Dr Orlena: And what about supplements? Do supplements help?

Dr Tracey Clissold: So a lot of people will take, especially elderly people, will be given supplements for vitamin D. So that is a possibility, but not having enough vitamin D in your system can negate some of the other things that we're talking about as being necessary for bone health. So all of [00:20:00] those things need to be in line and maybe, if you are unsure and people are living in, climates where they're not getting enough. Or any exposure 'cause people spend so much time inside now too, 

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: they're at their leisure activities are device based and sorts of things.

Not

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: enough of that sort of outdoor life just checking it, getting a blood test to look at what your vitamin D statuses it could be. Good.

Dr Orlena: Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Okay, so that's nutrition. Now moving on to favorite topic movement. How can we look after our bones and stop this Decline by

Dr Tracey Clissold: Yes. Okay. Exercise is great. All exercise is wonderful, but not all exercise is osteogenic. So not all exercise stimulates the bone. And so what we know is that bone actually needs mechanical strain. To be optimal and to hold onto that bone mineral density and even to increase that bone mineral density. So a lot of my research [00:21:00] was first diving into literature that already existed and some of the information was a hundred years old. So Wolf's law about how mechanical strain is absolutely vital to bone. And so I was, initially doing my due diligence and finding out all this fantastic information and realizing that there's this potential for us to have way better bones and to improve our bone health at a time where our physiology textbooks will tell us that we just lose it. But this stimulus that the bone needs has to satisfy some criteria to be able to switch bone on. And one of them is that it, we need some impact. We need some forces translated through the skeleton to the tune of around. Three body weights or more. so then you look at the recommendations that are out there for bone health and it says weight bearing.

And so a lot of people think that they're getting the forces through their skeleton that they need through doing things like walking and walking is fantastic. [00:22:00] Obviously a fantastic. Means of exercise, but it's not enough force to turn bone on. So we actually need targeted forces through our skeleton. We don't need a lot of them.

And that's the thing, we the program that I've designed that I rolled out in clinical trials with my participants took them two to three minutes. So they did these exercises while their kettle was boiling. So while they were waiting for their to have a cup of tea.

Dr Orlena: I was like.

Dr Tracey Clissold: Absolutely. And the thing is, these exercises, they're not to be like these landings that I coach people through on my app they are not landings to be done all the time. The way we are normally taught to land, I. Is so from a jump, for example, is to bend everything, to bend our knees, bend our hips, and absorb the forces, and we attenuate those forces in our muscles.

We don't take any of those forces in our bones when we land like that, and that's the perfect way to land for sport. And most of the time, but we actually need [00:23:00] some stiffer. More bone jarring forces to switch bone on. And that can be done relatively easily and safely. And the changes that my woman had from just adding these exercises into their daily lives.

So doing it at work. So getting up from you're desk based, up from your desk, taking your shoes off, then doing these exercises. Two to three minutes and then go getting on with your day. You don't have to have any special equipment. You don't have to go to the gym, you don't have to have a shower.

All those things that may be barriers for women to put exercise into their lives don't exist for this. I'm not saying that my bone health program is gonna tick the boxes for everything. I still want you to do all the other exercise you do the things that light you up like you talked about at the beginning. But by integrating these simple. Jump landings into your life you can have a significant improvement in bone mineral [00:24:00] density. So my woman gained three to 5% bone mineral density at the clinical site. So the hip, the lum,

Dr Orlena: Five.

Dr Tracey Clissold: exactly. But yes.

Dr Orlena: Losing half percent a year and you're gaining,

Dr Tracey Clissold: So if you think about what the normal losses are and add that on to the fact that you are actually gaining and not losing, that makes those gains better. If that

Dr Orlena: Yep. Totally. So you're not losing your Yeah. Perfect.

Dr Tracey Clissold: it's, yeah.

Dr Orlena: So just I want to ask you some questions about your app and get you to tell everyone about your app. But before I do that just thinking about how we jump around naturally. So sometimes if you're playing racket sports or if you're doing a hit workout, like some of it depends what you're doing in terms of hit some of them.

You are jumping around a lot. Is that helping in terms of your bone health or is that not sufficient?

Dr Tracey Clissold: is helping. Yeah. So anything and racket sports are great because they, in many cases, you're satisfying the magnitude of force, the rate of [00:25:00] force, but also the novelty of the way that the forces are applied. Those are all things the bone loves. So those sorts of spontaneous activities are really good. But some of the things that can get in the way of your bones still receiving those forces things like shoes. So shoes will

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: the forces. And the other is that in many cases we still are bending and absorbing the forces. So yes,

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: tennis players, squash players, netball players, people that are playing on hard surfaces and taking those forces will get that.

They will celebrate those bone mineral density. Benefits. But often what we find is that as we get older, we stop actually doing a lot of that sort of forced production.

Dr Orlena: That jarring movement.

Dr Tracey Clissold: into low impact. So we think as we age, we need to go low impact because we wanna protect our joints and those sorts of things.

And I'm totally on board with that because, I don't wanna do things that exacerbate joint injury. [00:26:00] Participating in those sorts of sports is great, but just integrating these kinds of. This pro, like something like this program can actually just be in addition to and not making

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: vulnerable to some of those particular joint issues that you might be susceptible to.

Dr Orlena: And what if you already have joint pain? So I've chatted to people and said, you need to be doing some jumping. And they're like, but I've had a hip operation, or I haven't got any cartilage in my knee. What about those people? How can they improve their joint, their bone density?

Dr Tracey Clissold: that's a really good point. I don't know, I think everybody is a, is an N of one. What I recommend people to do is that don't assume that you can't do it. You do need to try and be conservative initially to see how you tolerate those landings. And it may not be for you, it may not.

And so therefore it's thinking about other ways of applying those forces that don't involve maybe a jump phase. So we have exercises in that we've also been researching that don't have a jump [00:27:00] phase, so things like a heel drop and a stomp. It can be really effective and people can hold on to something while they do these things if they have balance or coordination issues.

If you're telling people to do jumps and I did my research in premenopausal women, so my women were under 50, but they can, it can be done at any age, as long as you can do it safely, and you can tolerate those landings. So I suppose that's a really important point. You don't just start putting these big forces through your skeleton and now your knees. Sort of blowing up. And you don't just keep doing it. You need to trial and error and see whether you can tolerate. But there's definitely indication that people that have low bone mass, like osteopenia, preexisting osteoporosis, can still benefit from. Doing these jump landings, it's probably more the joint conditions that are gonna prevent people from being able to do it, as opposed to having low bone mass. So research, not my research, but we are moving into that space. So we are gonna roll out this program [00:28:00] with people with osteopenia in that postmenopausal age group to see what we can do because the preexisting literature suggests that it's not possible to gain bone mass postmenopausally, but you can. So that's a gain. That's

Dr Orlena: Okay.

Dr Tracey Clissold: in itself. But even myself, I've rolled out the program and measured my own data already postmenopausal, and I had benefits of 3% at my hip and spine, so I benefited it. And that's in addition to running. So you think are you getting enough forces when you are running?

No, you're not, because the way we run. We are very economical and we are attenuating those forces. We're probably only getting two to three body weights of force while we run. We need more than three. So even people that are doing things that they think are applying those forces, you need to actually do some bone targeted landings, like two to three minutes in addition to what else you're doing and that will have a benefit on your bone that the [00:29:00] other exercise is not able to get. So you get all the other benefits

Dr Orlena: Okay,

Dr Tracey Clissold: exercise, obviously the metabolic cardiovascular feel good stuff. That's vital, but you're probably missing that piece. And that's the bone piece. And so that's where we have to actually be focused on that and do that in a really yeah. Targeted sort of setting.

Dr Orlena: perfect. So I think unless you have anything else to say, move on to your app.

Dr Tracey Clissold: Cool.

Dr Orlena: But I'm gonna tell people about your app 'cause I have your app.

Dr Tracey Clissold: that's awesome.

Dr Orlena: I'll tell people my experience of using your app and then if you have anything else. So I got your app. It's super easy, which. Like seriously, I was thinking about this and thinking, do I really need an app that is gonna tell me how to jump?

And then it said, you can do this whilst you're boiling the kettle. And I was like, okay, I wanna see what this app is all about. And it is super, super easy and it just teaches you how to do jumping. It sends you reminders, which I have to remember to go and calibrate. Now, what I didn't realize [00:30:00] when I got it was that you had to take your shoes off.

And so I've done it a little bit and I have to confess, we're just about to.

Dr Tracey Clissold: Awesome.

Dr Orlena: I was super lazy and I'm like, I'm gonna do this in summer 'cause it's gonna be so much easier to just take off my shoes and do the jumping and then build up that habit. So in a nutshell, it is super easy. Just really super easy.

Basically. I do have one question, which is when you go through them, you do a jump and then you say. To rest, and I don't know whether that is I'm just like, oh, can I just do all the jumps at one? Can I just.

Dr Tracey Clissold: Yeah. Great questions. And yeah, you're right. It's super easy and they are just coaching videos that take you progressively into more technical types of jumps. But I'm just gonna clarify that it's actually not about the jumping, it's about the landing. Yeah. And so that's where people are gone, right?

People know they have to do, maybe people know they need to do jumps, but they don't know how to land.

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: And that's

Dr Orlena: Yeah.[00:31:00] 

Dr Tracey Clissold: does is it teaches you how to land and cues you for that landing. And these are exercises that we've quantified over a couple of years, even though it seems so easy, it actually is it's very precise in its prescription.

So the fact that you rest is because the bone saturates. Very quickly and needs time to resensitize to receive the next stimulus. And that's why things like skipping, for example, are great but not ideal for bone health because the bone doesn't want that constant, it wants the a couple of big loading cycles and then it needs to rest.

Dr Orlena: Okay.

Dr Tracey Clissold: So I agree. 'cause I'm an active person, I'm frustrated by having to rest. And so one of the next iteration of our app is gonna have some things to do that are actually also about reduction.

Dr Orlena: Stretch in between.

Dr Tracey Clissold: some balance activities and coordination activities that also will [00:32:00] cumulatively add up to reducing falls risk, if it's purposeful.

Dr Orlena: hopeless when I the, I have to go look at your watch, wait for your heart rate to come down. I have to force myself to do it. So when I have this, I'm like, okay, I have to do, I can't remember how many jumps it is. Five or landing five. Landing. Landing, and then get on and make the.

Dr Tracey Clissold: Yeah. And it's, yeah, it's great that you say that because yeah, people be thinking that, but it is incredibly purposeful and this is, coming from a, literature that's potentially a hundred years old and animal studies and understanding bone physiology, that's what's gone into this very simple thing.

So the fact that it can be rolled out and you can say, wow, this is so simple. And it is,

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: on exactly what you need to do to actually get these

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: So if you can stick to the script, then you will celebrate the benefits that are that you are due for your. Dedication to doing it. 

Dr Orlena: Perfect.

Dr Tracey Clissold: the app is in saying it's two to three [00:33:00] minutes. Each of the short videos is maybe four minutes long with the rest integrated and a little bit of coaching in there as well. But what we recommend is that people, especially people that aren't physically active currently, is that they do the preconditioning program.

So it's a four

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: that's a little bit more than two to three minutes. So it's like your insurance policy for being. Strong enough and ready and safe enough to be able to tolerate those jump landings. It involves strengthening and conditioning your legs, your core, your butt and your back.

And so it's really about getting you nice and strong and getting you also familiar with doing some just simple sub maximal jumps before you start to do these stiff landings. And a lot of people over 30, over 40, over 50. You say, when was the last time you did some jumping? And they'll say, wow, I can't even remember it.

Dr Orlena: I.

Dr Tracey Clissold: Exactly. So starting to practice, just doing some [00:34:00] simple jumps can be quite challenging for people to do. And that's why, the four week program that sits before you even start doing the jump landing program is really vital for just getting you prepared and getting your body ready. And and that's what I did with my research participants because, they came from a cross section of of physical activity.

Some were completely sedentary and some were. We're active, but yeah it's really for anyone. If you're a elite athlete, you still need to do this. Jump program or if you are completely sedentary, you're gonna benefit. And so everybody benefited across that spectrum and really when you peel it back, you go nobody's doing this.

No one's putting these forces through the skeleton just accidentally in life. We actually have to purposefully do it, but we have to do it safely. We have to think about how we are landing and then we don't land like that the rest of the time. We do what our

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: naturally do, which is bend and absorb the forces because that's safe for our joints.[00:35:00] 

Dr Orlena: Perfect. And it's not an expensive app as well. I know some apps you can get caught into like these subscriptions and you have to pay monthly and we have to think about how we're spending our money, but I can't remember how much it was. It was like, I think 20 euros or something like that. I presume price might change 

Dr Tracey Clissold: the price is

Dr Orlena: I don't know.

Dr Tracey Clissold: We'd love to offer the, this app for free because that's why I did my PhD in the first place was I was frustrated. I wanted to share this information to every woman on the planet and say that you can do something about your bone health. We are in this terrible end of the statistics, but yeah, we, myself and my academic.

Supervisors have invested our own money into this, and developing an app is not free. We are trying to work with different organizations who are in the business of public health to try and get the ability to offer this app for free. But it is a little bit naive of me as an

Dr Orlena: Because here's what happens in the uk. So I'm in Spain, but my mother is in the UK and she says if you have a DEXA [00:36:00] scan that shows that you have low mineral density, they give you a subscription to the gym. And I think that's a little bit backwards. Why don't they give everyone a subscription to the gym and then nobody needs to have low mineral density 'cause they're looking after it.

But I do think people and healthcare systems are beginning to change. And become aware that our lifestyle is really important. And actually if we in or if healthcare systems invest in teaching people how to lead a healthy life, they're actually gonna save money in the long run.

Dr Tracey Clissold: right. And the price of the app is 24.99 us so whatever that

Dr Orlena: Okay.

Dr Tracey Clissold: to in Euros, that's a year of having access to the Preconditioning program, the 52 week jump program, all our educational, other videos about nutrition and other things you can do. So that's where we are with the app and we are also working to further develop it.

So we've. Already got such exciting plans for the next 12 months. In saying that it's a 12 month program, we actually can never stop imparting [00:37:00] stress to our skeleton, what we can tolerate, and that may change based on our preexisting injuries, conditions. Balance, all those sorts of things, but we just have to do what we can in terms of providing forces through the skeleton. And I just, I'm excited about being able to share even just the education piece with people to say, Hey, look, there's something you can do. Because at the moment, like you say, it's really frustrating that people. A don't know. They maybe have preexisting issues like the people that are at risk. Most are people who are women that are over 50 and that are Caucasian or Asian. So those are our risk factors and people that aren't. Doing a lot of sort of impact type activity. That's, those are other things that maybe we do know or we don't know about, but the DEXA scan, it's a brilliant piece of technology that will tell you exactly what the state of your bones are, but most people don't have access to having one. 

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: something I have in my lab. So I [00:38:00] can, I'm under a research umbrella. I'm able to offer people DEXA scans and people just wanna know, what's

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: And then they wanna know what they can do. And of course, there's always options that exist in pharmacology and they'll be offered to you through that system. And that's great, but that's not for everyone. Some people wanna just know what can I do just from a.

Dr Orlena: Prevention is better as well. I always think.

Dr Tracey Clissold: do? What can I do with exercise? What can I do with nutrition? And I've also got risk factors that I have from choosing my parents wisely or unwisely. 

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: we know.

That's,

Dr Orlena: Talking about parents, can you gift your app to somebody? Because I think it would make a lovely gift to give. Like I'm thinking it's my mother's birthday soon, and I think it would be something that I would like to gift her. But can you gift it? Can you purchase it and give it to somebody else?

Dr Tracey Clissold: that feature on our app yet. So we've, absolutely. And we are learning so much as we are going with with the app and we are getting, 'cause our expertise is in the science of it and. And the delivery of it, and then the sharing of it. Man, that's just blown my [00:39:00] mind.

And I've learned a lot and there's so many features that we'll add going forward. I don't know if that's possible what you've said about gifting it, but maybe you could just get to do it and just drop the money in her account and get her hooked up with it. But yeah.

Dr Orlena: I'll, if you gimme a link, I'll leave a link in the show notes so people who are interested can go find out. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. Any last words that you want to say to people?

Dr Tracey Clissold: I know that you are all about aging fabulously, and your listeners are all about that and that's just the mantra of my life as well. I think it's just taking responsibility for how we age and just getting, moving. I think whatever you do

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: is beneficial that whole old adage of. Use it or lose it is so true.

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: We just can never feel like we can stop. If people feel like they aged enough to now just sit down and let aging happen. I think that's a terrible way to think. I think we just have to keep moving and whatever way.

Dr Orlena: There's a fabulous, [00:40:00] there's a fabulous poster in our swimming pool, which says, you don't get old. Sorry. You don't stop swimming when you get old. You get old when you stop swimming, and I think you could apply that to anything with running or whatever it's doing, but it's exactly the same. And I think even just looking after yourself, you don't like if you look after yourself, obviously we all age, but if we actually look after ourselves,

Dr Tracey Clissold: better.

Dr Orlena: we remain vibrant.

Dr Tracey Clissold: that's right. And we owe it to ourselves to do that. For those of you that have started to age like myself, you start to feel things changing and so that can be a real motivator to say, I can do something about that. Don't just let aging happen to you. Just go out and be yeah. Be fabulous. Yeah.

Dr Orlena: Fabulous. Other than your app, where can people find you on the internet?

Dr Tracey Clissold: can search up osteo gains.com. So that is

Dr Orlena: Yeah.

Dr Tracey Clissold: Our website and we have a really awesome Instagram going now and, 

Dr Orlena: what is your Instagram?

Dr Tracey Clissold: Is that's good. It's osteo [00:41:00] gains. You're asking the person who's not the, at that end. But Osteo Gains will get you to our our Instagram and

Dr Orlena: Perfect.

Dr Tracey Clissold: find us on the apple App Store and the Google Play Store. So

Dr Orlena: Perfect.

Dr Tracey Clissold: there. People can download it straight from there. And we've got loads of information and we've got a Facebook community page and. It's going great

Dr Orlena: Okay,

Dr Tracey Clissold: 'cause people are talking

Dr Orlena: perfect.

Dr Tracey Clissold: yeah, we love to

Dr Orlena: Perfect.

Dr Tracey Clissold: as well. Great to talk. Yeah. Awesome.

Thanks Dr.