Arizona woman with osteoporosis takes up pole dancing to improve her condition
PHOENIX - There’s a new osteoporosis treatment, and when coupled with exercise, it can really turn your life around.
Doctors say the best thing you can do to strengthen your bones is to exercise and that comes in many forms. For Debbie Rondeau, she took up pole dancing.
"I’ve done yoga, I’ve done pilates and core strength training. It’s a combination of all those things but having a pole apparatus," Rondeau said.
She picked up pole dancing almost six years ago.
Debbie Rondeau
"You just don’t have her body composition and I thought ‘OK, that’s it, game on.’ So, then the next piece was just trying to find a studio that would fit me overall because this is not something a typical 60-year-old person, 60-year-old plus person would end up doing," Rondeau said.
At the time, Rondeau just found out she had osteoporosis.
"Osteoporosis is a silent, preventable bone disease. It is very, very common, and it is estimated that approximately one in every two women over the age of 50 may experience an osteoporosis fracture in their lifetime," Dr. Krupa Doshi with Mayo Clinic said.
She says women over 65 need to be screened for osteoporosis, and that women tend to develop it more often than men.
She recommends vitamin D, calcium and exercise.
Mayo Clinic describes the condition saying, in part, "Your bones are in a constant state of renewal – new bone is made and old bone is broken down. When you're young, your body makes new bone faster than it breaks down old bone and your bone mass increases. After the early 20s this process slows, and most people reach their peak bone mass by age 30. As people age, bone mass is lost faster than it's created."
For Rondeau, that means she’s now at the studio five days a week.
"It takes building up of that strength and I think that that’s been a really big benefit of being a pole dancer," she said.
Along with exercise, Dr. Doshi put Rondeau on two treatments to help repair her bone density.
"She started on a bone building agent. In her case, we elected to do a medicine called teriparatide . This is an injection that Debbie chose to take. It's an everyday injection," Dr. Doshi said. "Once she completes the treatment over a couple of years, this has to be followed by another agent to kind of cement the bone building that has occurred with the medicine."
It’s a success so far, and she recommends the treatment, and of course the pole dancing.
"To embrace yourself and to come as you are and not be expecting that ‘OK, I have to be in perfect shape to hop on a pole.' That really, come as you are, and you will get fit and healthy," Dr. Doshi said.
Rondeau is just 67 years old, but says her goal is to be pole dancing well into her 90s.