Ep 132 Lead With Your Bones Part 3: What Stress is Really Doing to Your Bones (and What Actually Helps)

Are you losing bone when you can’t do as much? 

It’s the question Carly left hanging at the end of part two and this week she answers it. 

In the final episode of the Lead With Your Bones series, Carly goes wider. 

Nutrition, stress, sleep, breath, circulation, and the emotional landscape that either nourishes or depletes your skeleton over time. 

Because bone health isn’t just about what you lift. It’s how you live.

She explains why cortisol, the stress hormone so many midlife women are swimming in, directly suppresses bone building and why sleep is a bone health intervention. Why breathwork lowers cortisol. And why the things we do to manage stress are also, quietly, things we do for our bones.

Topics covered:

→ The honest answer to ‘am I losing bone during a hard season’  and why it’s more hopeful than you think

→ Cortisol and bone loss, the direct, evidence-based connection most women have never been told

→ Why sleep is a bone health intervention

→ How breathwork supports your skeleton; the science, not just the experience

→ Nutrition for bone health beyond calcium

→ The bare minimum for your bones when life is hard

Series finale. Find Carly at Still Space Hull  book a free breathwork discovery call or an Embodied Strength Profile Assessment, online or in person carlykillen.com

Thanks for listening to Rooted In Presence

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: carlykillenpt@gmail.com
📱 Instagram: @thestrongbonescoach

Do you crave unshakable confidence in your strength from midlife and beyond? Would you love to achieve your goals without sacrificing family time or self-care?

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👉 Click here to learn more and access today

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🌟 For tailored advice or personal queries, email me at carlykillenpt@gmail.com

Thank you for being here, and I look forward to supporting you on your journey to strength, health, and confidence! 💪🦴✨

Transcript

0:46

Hello and welcome back to Rooted in Presence. I'm Carly, your host and your guide for what is now episode 132 of the podcast. And this is also the third and final part of the Lead with Your Bones series. So if you've been following us from the beginning, thank you. We've covered a lot of ground. In episode 130, we reframed what bone actually is. It's living tissue, constantly remodeling parts of a connected fascial system. Far more extraordinary than most of us were ever taught. And in episode 131, we talked about movement and strength. Why load matters and what the muscle bone relationship really means, and why is this never too late to start? So today we are going wider. So yes, we're doing nutrition, but also stress, sleep, breath, and the whole emotional and physiological landscape that either nourishes or depletes your bones over time. And I'd like to start with the question I ended on last week. I know a lot of you will have been sitting with it. Are you losing bone when you can't do as much? So if you're going through a period of burnout, illness, exhaustion, or low capacity, if you feel like life has reduced what you can do and you're wondering whether your bones are suffering as a result, then this is for you. The honest answer really is a prolonged period of inactivity or very low load will have an impact on your bone remodeling. It does quieten down the signal the osteoblasts have less to respond to. We know this from studying patients on bed rests from astronauts and zero gravity and from what happens during long periods of illness. So yes. The body does respond to the absence of load just as it responds to its presence. But what I'd like you to hear alongside that is the goal after our mid thirties, it shifts. It's less about building new bone and more about maintaining what you have and slowing any loss as much as possible. I know that sounds like a bit of a bleak message because most fitness messages are, be greater, be more, do more, build, build, build. But it doesn't need to be the bleak message that it sounds like it's actually quite an empowering one because it means that what you do now from now on genuinely matters and it can make a difference. So the thing about load is Load is your effort relative to the current capacity that you have. So if you're in a hard season, if you're exhausted or recovering from illness, lighter weights lifted slowly, they still send a signal, a shorter walk still sends a signal. Gentle movement, stretching to some extent standing, shifting your weight. It still counts. It is something, and your bones don't need you to be at your best all the time. They need you to show up with what you have. And I think about the patients I've seen in intensive care sedated unable to move themselves at all, and the physiotherapists would come and move their limbs passively. So not putting them through some dramatic exercise program.'cause it wasn't possible, it wasn't desirable. They were still fighting for their lives. But that gentle, careful movement helped to maintain some signal as best they could, and even that matters. It still registers. So wherever you are right now, whatever your capacity looks like today, there is something you can do. It doesn't have to look like what it used to look like for you. It just has to be what you can do now. So that question isn't necessarily, am I losing ground? It's what can I do with what I have right now? And the answer to that, it's almost always more than you think and exactly enough. So let's talk about stress and your skeleton. I don't really think this gets enough air time and definitely not nearly enough attention in the bone health conversation. So. Talking about stress now, most people, especially if you're listening to this podcast, you'll be aware that estrogen affects bone density. Fewer people know that cortisol at primary stress hormone also does so too, and the relationship is direct and actually really well evidenced so when cortisol is elevated for a prolonged period of time, as it is during chronic stress burnout, or long periods of anxiety, it actively interferes with osteoblast function. So remember those builders that I talked about in episode one 30? So elevated cortisol essentially tells'em to slow down or suppresses the bone formation. At the same time, it can increase bone resorption. So that's the breaking down side of the roof modeling cycle, more breaking down, less building up over time. That tips the balance. And this is all because historically, when we lived wild lives, prolonged stress usually meant famine, shortage of food, the need to go traveling, the need to avoid danger. Therefore, our bodies would be. Putting the energy into keeping our vital organs going until sufficient food was present again. So maintaining the rest of the body wasn't a priority when higher levels of cortisol were present. And even studies have demonstrated this on many occasions, but particular larger study of over 11,000 postmenopausal women found that those who reported high levels of stress had a measurably. Lower bone mineral density six years later, even after accounting for age, weight, smoking status, and other factors. The stress itself was an independent risk factor. So of course I want to be careful not to create anxiety about this because that would be pretty counterproductive. I do think as women, we deserve to know that the stress we've been carrying, the burnout, the overstretched years, the invisible weight of holding everything together has a real physical dimension that includes the bones. And this is not to add blame or shame or guilt here, it's just to bring awareness because knowing that opens up new options for you and new choices. If stress depletes bone, then the things that we do to manage stress are also actually things we can do for our bones, and that changes the story completely. Right? So what can we do to manage stress? You've probably heard of a few techniques, a few ideas already, but what is it that helps to lower cortisol regulate our nervous system and create the physiological conditions? In which bone can rebuild well, top of the list is sleep. Now during deep sleep growth, hormone is released, and growth hormone directly supports osteoblast activity and bone formation. So poor or disrupted sleep, which is so common in perimenopause and menopause. Is therefore also a bone health issue as well as an energy and mood issue too. So protecting your sleep as best as you can is also protecting your skeleton. Now, breath is another, it can help your sleep, but it can help your stress levels too. And I'm not just saying this as a breath facilitator, even though that is what I do. And I've seen what it does for other people and me. Hmm. I say this because the evidence is there. So intentional breathing increases the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system that rest and repair state. And in doing so, it lowers cortisol. It can help the body shift outta chronic stress response, and that shift sustained over time creates biochemical environment that is more supportive of bone building. And of course, circulation matters too. Bone is a vascular tissue. It needs a blood supply to receive nutrients and to carry away waste products from the remodeling, process, movement, support, circulation, and so does hydration and warmth. And interestingly, so does the breath, the cycle of breathing, the movement of the diaphragm directly. Influences blood flow and lymphatic drainage too, so it's all connected. And then we have inflammation, which is increased in chronic stress and also isn't helped by lowering estrogen levels. If you are a woman listening to this in your perimenopausal stage. But it's also a factor in bone loss. So the inflammatory molecules produced during ongoing stress, they can hinder bone building directly. So again, the things that reduce inflammation, rest, supportive nutrition, breath, gentle movement, reducing the chronic stress load are also bone health interventions too, even if they don't look like it from the outside. So I'm gonna touch upon nutrition briefly'cause I do have a more in depth episode from earlier on in the timeline of this podcast. But because bone health and food are so often reduced to just a single message on that message of calcium, and while calcium absolutely matters, the picture is absolutely and considerably richer than that. Calcium is the primary mineral in bone tissue, and getting enough through your diet does really matter. So good sources can include dairy if you eat it. Fortified plant milks, leafy green vegetables, almonds, salmon, and tin sardines including the bones. But calcium alone isn't the whole story. Vitamin D is really essential. It's needed for calcium absorption and most of us in the UK, if you are listening from there, can be deficient particularly through the winter months. So if you're not supplementing vitamin D, uh, especially vitamin D with K two, that's been found to be more effective. But if they haven't been doing that through winter, it's definitely worth considering. And of course, check in with your health provider first. I can't give individual advice through a podcast, but a baseline blood test can be really helpful to see where you're at. And of course, sunlight does remain the best source when it's available. It's just not always that available, is it? So now let's look at protein. It's often overlooked, especially in the bone health conversation, but it shouldn't be. Bone is actually around a third collagen, and that's a protein and adequate protein intake supports that structural integrity of bone, tissue as well as the muscle. So given that we know muscle and bone are in constant communication, keeping protein intake up is like doing a double duty. Getting enough protein, especially at meal times, is also key to signaling to your body to increase muscle growth. So that's your muscle protein synthesis in the scientific terms, and you can also support yourself here with magnesium Vitamin D. With K two, your and your Omega-3 fatty acids, they all play supporting roles in bone metabolism. So the key message here is that it's not just about one thing. There's no magic fix or one thing to focus on, but a varied. Whole food diet that includes plenty of vegetables, protein, every meal, healthy fats. We'll cover most of this off, and if you're navigating a period of reduced appetite, whether that's through illness, stress, or simply the chaos of midlife, then focus on getting the protein and vegetables in first. See where your carbohydrates fit and be kind to yourself about the rest. And of course there's one thing here that is really worth mentioning. If you are navigating disordered or very restrictive eating, including the kind of chronic dieting that many women in midlife have a long history with, it's can be one of the most significant risk factors for low bone mineral density. So if that resonates with you. Again, that's not a reason to feel ashamed, but It is a reason to be especially intentional about nourishing yourself. Now, I've navigated this both myself as a dietician and personally, so if you're worried about how disordered eating patterns may have impacted on your bone health to reach out because it's never too late, but now is always a good time to start. So let's come back around to where we started today.'cause I know that some of you listening are in a hard season, burnout, illness, perhaps grief, the accumulating weight of too many years, of giving too much. So I'm speaking directly to you now. You have not ruined your bones, you have not missed your window. You have not done irreversible damage by going through something hard. Your body has been under pressure and it deserves some attention right now. Not in a punishing way or in a making up for lost time kind of way, it's the quiet work, the intentional choice of, I'm going back to myself. And that's the, the bare minimum for your bones. When life is hard, move a little every day. Walk. If you can eat protein, get outside. When sunlight is available, protect your sleep and find something. One thing that reliably lowers your stress response for you. Something you can come back to. A breath, a practice, a moment of stillness, maybe. They are not small things. They are your foundation. And the foundation is always where we begin. So there we have it, three episodes, one thread all the way throughout leading with the bones.'cause your bones are alive. They are part of a connected, intelligent, responsive system that is listening to how you live. They can be loaded and strengthened through movement. They can be nourished through food, through sleep, through the management of stress, and they can be neglected, not through malicious choice, but through not knowing through life getting in the way through the particular pressures that midlife women carry. And I started this series with the story of La Loba from the book, women Who Run With the Wolves by one of my favorite authors, Clarissa Pink Estes. And that story of Le Loba, the woman who wanders the desert, gathering wolf bones, singing them back to life. Want to return to that now because I think that's one of the things that have influenced the work that I do. In quite a deep way. The gathering is truly practical. The strength training, the nutrition, the stress management, the sleep, that's the collecting of the bones in the desert. The unglamorous patient one day at a time, work of building a body that can hold your life. But the song. The part that allows the bones to knit together and leap to life. That's something else. That is your relationship with yourself. The compassion, the willingness to gather up all your parts, including the ones you've neglected, the ones that were under resourced for years, the ones that carried more than they should have, and your chance to sing them back together again. You are already whole. You already have everything you need. Sometimes it just needs gathering up. Sometimes it just needs a song and perhaps even someone to listen to it. So thank you for being here for all three parts of this series. It has been a joy to share it with you, and if you'd like to explore what breath work could do for your nervous system, your stress response, and yeah, even your bone health, I'd love to have that conversation with you. So, if that's something that interests you, you can book a free discovery call with me and we can talk about how breath work might support your journey, whether that's online or in person. That's still space Hull. And of course if strength training feels like the right next step for you. Oh, you'd like to even know exactly where your body is right now, what it might need. Then this is where my Embodied Strength Profile assessment is a lovely place to begin. This will really help you trust in that next step so you know it's the right one for you. So you can come and find me there at stillspacehull.com. I would love to walk this season with you. So until next time. You meet yourself with compassion, walk with presence, and remember you already have everything you need.