[Exercise for prevention of osteoporosis and other lifestyle-related diseases]

The prevalence of lifestyle-related diseases including hypertension, dyslipidemia (hyperlipidemia) and diabetes increases with aging, and all these conditions are risk factors of arteriosclerotic diseases such as cerebrovascular event (stroke) and myocardial infarction. The term "metabolic domino" has been used to describe the collective concept of the development and progression of these lifestyle-related diseases, the sequence of events, and the progression process of complications. Like the first tile of a domino toppling game, undesirable lifestyle such as overeating and underexercising first triggers obesity, and is followed in succession by onset of an insulin resistance state (underlied by a genetic background indigenous to Japanese) , hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and further postprandial hyperglycemia (the pre-diabetic state) , the so-called metabolic syndrome, at around the same time. On the other hand, apart from the other lifestyle-related diseases, the prevalence of osteoporosis also increases rapidly accompanying aging. Osteoporosis is known to be strongly related to disorders due to the metabolic domino such as arteriosclerosis and vascular calcification, and a new disease category called "osteo-vascular interaction" has attracted attention recently. Regarding "osteo-vascular interaction" , a close relation between bone density loss or osteoporotic changes and vascular lesion-associated lifestyle-related diseases such as hypertension, dyslipidemia and diabetes has been reported. Therefore, as a common preventive factor for bone mass loss or osteoporosis and lifestyle-related diseases including hypertension, dyslipidemia and diabetes (osteo-vascular interaction) , exercise has been recognized anew as an important non-pharmaceutical therapy that should take top priority. This article overviews the evidence of exercise therapy for the prevention of osteoporosis and other lifestyle-related diseases, from the viewpoint of health promotion, especially of the skeletal system (motor system) .