Weight Vests for Osteoporosis? Do They Really Build Bone?

hey Dr Doug Lucas here retired orthopedic surgeon now focusing my practice on longevity and bone health have you been diagnosed with osteoporosis or osteopenia and you're looking at every possible way to help build bone and you've found that a weighted vest is the right way to do it well stick around because I'm going to go through some of the research that kind of supports the use of a weighted vest I say that very carefully because there is some literature that supports it but there's some that doesn't and you might want to know the difference and when you should wear it how long you should wear it so stick around thank you all right so in general what is the entire purpose behind wearing a weighted vest it all comes down to this idea of Wolf's Law so we learned this in medical school and definitely we learn this in Orthopedics that bones respond to stress now we talk about that a lot when it comes to Healing bones but it's really important when it comes to building bone and your bone health so why wear a weighted vest because a weighted vest is going to add more stress the good kind of stress to your bones and that will help in theory increase bone density and quality over time but here's the thing not everybody should wear a weighted vest and this is where I get really worried about seeing recommendations online and social media and even on YouTube that says that pretty much everybody should wear a weighted vest the truth is that if you have severe osteoporosis definitely if you've recently had a vertebral fracture possibly if you've ever had a vertebral fracture this might not be the best tool for you I can't tell you what's right for you I can only tell you what I tell my patients in general so if you are worried about it ask your care team but I'm going to go through some of the things that I talk to my patients about all right so the first study I want to talk about is called the Erlanger Fitness osteoporosis study this is a study that was published in 2004 and what I like about this study is that it was a really long trial as far as fitness and exercise trials go it was over two years long so 26 months and what was cool about it is that they did use a weighted vest in the intervention and they had a control group so they had people that weren't doing the exercise and then they had people that were doing the exercise with weighted vests and the outcomes were good the patients that were in the intervention trial maintained or improved their bone mineral density whereas those that were in the control group lost Bill and mineral density over time which is what you would expect if they're not doing any exercise the problem is is that they didn't have a third arm that just did exercise without the weighted vest so we don't really know was the weighted vest really the intervention that made the difference or was it the exercise alone and they did aerobics they did impact and they did strength training so it's kind of hard to tell and some of the the exercise alone studies showed actually better Improvement than this study showed from a bone mineral density perspective okay so the next two studies kind of followed the same Trend they're newer though so there's a 2016 study and a 2017 study now they both have control groups that didn't do exercise and then relatively long interventions that included different forms of exercise different frequency different duration but with the weighted vest and both of them showed Improvement compared to control but again there was no study arm that just did exercise so we really again don't know is it the exercise alone or did the weighted vest have a significant impact there all right now the last study I want to show you was actually the study that I was looking for in researching weighted best because people have been recommending weighted vest for as long as I've been in the bone health field so this 2012 study actually had three arms like I wanted a control group an intervention group with a weighted best and an intervention group without a weighted vest now every study has potential weaknesses in how it's designed this one I would argue that the intervention time period was way too short it was only six weeks I would not expect to see significant bone changes in six weeks but nevertheless they still did bone turnover markers older ones but still reasonable so we're looking at bone turnover markers how quickly are you losing bone how quickly are you gaining bone and they looked at bone mineral density after a six-week trial so they did this six week trial the participants exercised for 30 minutes three days a week and it was really just walking with the weighted vest which is a good intervention to see if there's a difference but maybe not the only thing you should do with your weighted vest we'll see in this trial they said in the conclusion that there was no statistically significant difference between the weighted vest group and the exercise group but that both groups did better than the control group meaning that exercise better than no exercise I think we've seen that in every study right and they go on to say that the weighted vest group over the other exercise group had more Improvement in balance and motor control which is important for helping to prevent Falls however if you look at this chart what you can see here is that the ntx which is an older version of the lab that we use called CTX but the ntx is a marker of bone breakdown so we're looking at how quickly are you losing bone and what you can see is that there is a trend towards significance in the weighted vest versus the non-weighted vest exercise group meaning that the ntx came down more in the weighted best group than did the other exercise group and certainly both came down more than the controller group so what that tells me is that if if they had gone on for three months six months 12 months in the intervention that likely we would have seen a difference now I can't say that for sure but I could say that potentially we're going to see that difference so what does the research tell me about weighted best it tells me that they are an effective tool they are probably not the Magic Bullet they are not going to solve your bone health problem on its own but what they can do is be a tool that you can add to your aromaterium if it's safe for you to do so if you're liking this content please like subscribe and sign up for notifications so that we can send you notifications when we have new content available secondly if you know anybody that would benefit from this information please share this with them so that they can continue to learn and grow on their own bone health journey and lastly if you want to know more about how we manage osteoporosis or other ways that you can manage bone health on your own sign up for our free master class in the description below so what should this vest look like does it need to look like this one are there other types out there well there are a whole bunch of types out there so there are some that are this form so this is a kind of a big metal plate that goes in the front big metal plate on the back you can put a lot of weight in a vest like this this particular vest has 40 pounds on it which is way more than probably anybody watching this video needs I use this as as more of a fitness tool not so much as an approach to improve my bone health but this can be used for that same thing but with a lighter weight the plates usually come separate from the vest themselves and the plates can be all the way down to I think they sell them you know one or two pound increments so they can get very very light now as far as how much weight so you put in your vest it's gonna really vary on your unique situation this is where having some guidance can be really helpful what I tell my patients is that unless they've had a recent vertebral fracture or a vertebral fracture at all or they have severe osteoporosis and are at extreme risk then it's probably safe to start with potentially five percent up to ten percent but again it depends on their unique scenario ten percent of your body weight is still a significant amount of weight to move around particularly if you're wearing it for a prolonged period of time now if you look at the studies the the participants of the studies really only wore the best for the duration of the exercise there are other studies where they simply wore the vest around they would wear the best on average you know four five six hours throughout the day to do activities of daily living and that's okay I would be a little bit worried about getting into an awkward position though you know getting into those positions that you're not supposed to be in with extra weight on your spine that would concern me so I think being very directed about what you're doing doing a very specific exercise going outside going for a walk you know if you're going to do exercises like squats lunges you could also do impact training now I say this very carefully and when I talk to my patients about this uh you have to be very careful about how you do this there are several studies that look at impact training and we'll do another video on rebound training specifically using trampolines the problem is that if you get into an awkward position with extra weight on your body and you're trying to do some form of impact obviously the risk for for injury goes up there so I would recommend if you're going to try to do that probably work with a trainer at least initially to make sure that you're doing doing it well you're doing it with good form and that you're not going to hurt yourself but adding impact to a weighted vest is probably going to exponentially improve your gains from a bone mineral density perspective so in conclusion is the weighted vest the magic pill for osteoporosis I don't think so I think it's a tool and when we create plans for people we are pulling so many different levers that this is just simply one of them and if you have access to one that's great if you have the resources for one start light see how it feels this is what I tell my patients and I have some people that love it some people that don't want to wear it as I mentioned before there are different forms so there are the plate form like this and then there's some that are more like a vest and then you have pockets around the waist potentially can take some pressure off of your chest it just depends on what you're looking for and how much weight you want to carry all right that's all I have on weighted vests if you like this information again please like subscribe and sign up for notifications if you want to learn more about how we manage osteoporosis or other things that you can do on your own look for the link in the master class below you can sign up for this free master class and again learn about all these tips and tricks that you can do on your own on your own bone health Journey finally I want to hear from you I love comments on YouTube we get such great interactions we're educating people through this platform pointing them in the right direction of resources so please if you have questions leave them in the comment section below if you want to hear about other topics please leave that too weighted vest is the most common question that I've had over the last month and that's why we created this video I look forward to seeing you in the next video thank you [Music]