Weight Bearing Exercise Builds Bones Best

“Weight-bearing aerobic activities involve doing aerobic exercise on your feet, with your bones supporting your weight. Examples include walking, dancing, low-impact aerobics, elliptical training machines, stair climbing and gardening. These types of exercise work directly on the bones in your legs, hips and lower spine to slow mineral loss. They can also provide cardiovascular benefits, which boost heart and circulatory system health.”    Mayo Clinic, Exercising with osteoporosis

The best way to avoid or treat osteoporosis is weight bearing exercise  Stressing your bones will make the bone stronger. If you are right handed your right arm and right leg have greater bone masses than your left ones, often as much as 8% more. They have this greater mass and STRENGTH because you use them more. Incidentally just because a bone has greater mass does not always mean that bone is stronger. As we see modern wonder drugs such as the bisphosphonates can build bones with greater mass that are weaker and more likely to fracture.

http://healthyprotocols.com/2_osteop_1.htm