The Life Cycle of Bones: How to Maintain Bone Health

When most people think about back pain, they think about muscles, maybe their core, maybe their posture. But there’s another major player that often gets ignored, and that’s the bones.

That might sound surprising, but if you’re struggling with long-term back discomfort, understanding how your bones work, and how they change as you age, can be a game-changer for managing pain and protecting your spine in the future.

Let’s dive into how your bones develop, what happens to them over time, and how simple lifestyle changes (like the right kind of exercise) can help prevent bone loss and promote lifelong skeletal health

The life cycle of bones: how bones grow

Believe it or not, you weren’t born with "real" bones. At birth, your skeleton was mostly made of cartilage, the soft, flexible stuff you find in your nose and ears. Over time, minerals like calcium and phosphorus get laid into that cartilage, slowly turning it into hard, strong bone.

As a child and teenager, your bones were constantly changing shape and size. When you hit a growth spurt during puberty, your long bones - the ones in your legs and arms - rapidly lengthened and thickened.

By your early to mid-20s, your bones had fully formed in length and reached their peak strength and density.

After that, the story changes.

What happens to your bones as you get older?

Once we pass our mid-20s, our bones stop growing. But the thing many people don’t understand is that they never stop changing. That’s because bone is a living tissue. It’s constantly breaking down and rebuilding in a process called remodelling.

Here’s how it works:

• When you move, exercise, or lift something, tiny micro-cracks form in your bones - don’t worry, that’s not as scary as it sounds!
• Your body senses this and responds by repairing those cracks and building your bones back stronger.
• This keeps your bones dense, thick, and resilient.

But the problem is, as you age, the work of your bone-building cells (osteoblasts) slows down and your osteoclasts - the cells that clear out old bone, speed up.

That means that little by little you're losing more bone than you’re gaining, unless you give your body a reason to keep building.

Which is where exercise comes in.

What does this have to do with back pain?

Your spine is made up of vertebrae, which respond to stress and movement. If you don’t use your spine, perhaps you sit too much, move too little, or stop challenging your body, your bones (especially in the spine and hips) can gradually lose density.

That can lead to things like:

• Poor posture
• Weakened support for discs and joints
• A higher risk of fractures or “compression injuries”
• Chronic back pain

But the good news is: this is preventable.

By loading your body with the right kind of exercise, you can help keep your bones, and your spine, healthy, dense, and strong well into your 60s, 70s, and even beyond.

What can you do to maintain bone health into your later years?

A lot of exercise programs out there are designed for sports performance. But if you're not planning on becoming a powerlifter or professional athlete (and especially if you're already dealing with back pain), that’s not what your body needs.

Instead, what your spine and bones need is:

• Consistent, low-impact movement like walking or swimming
• Strength training using your own bodyweight or light resistance
• Posture and stability work that supports your spine
• Long-term habits you can stick to for years, not just quick fixes.

If we were much more active as a species in this modern world, then this would take care of it to some degree. But unfortunately we are not as active as we could be, which means we’re not using our muscles and bones as we should be, putting us at risk of losing them. muscles and bones because we aren't using it and therefore we are losing them.

In the next part of this series I’ll talk about some exercises we should all be doing, at any age, to improve and maintain bone health.

But in the meantime, if you want to build stronger bones and muscles, click here to receive monthly education and advice via my newsletter: Strength Training Newsletter