More and more it seems that exercise is the best medicine. Regular workouts with weights not only build muscle, fight heart disease and reduce stress, but will pre-empt the onset of osteoporosis in both women and men. Whether you are 14, 40, or 60, it is never too soon or too late to prevent bone loss. You can start right now to strengthen your bones and increase your reserve of healthy bone mass.
Osteoporosis causes bones to lose mass and density. As the bones become porous and brittle, the chance of fracture is greatly increased. Often there are no symptoms and a person only discovers that they have osteoporosis when they suffer a fracture. More than 1.5 million bone fractures occur every year in the United States because of this silent and hidden bone condition.
Twenty-eight million Americans are affected by osteoporosis. Often mischaracterized as a disease that effects only women, today 2 million American men have osteoporosis, and another 12 million are at risk for this disease. In men, as in women, osteoporosis can weaken the skeleton making bones more likely to break. By age 65, men lose bone mass as fast as women do.
During youth, bones grow in length and density. During the teen years, maximum height is reached, but bones continue to grow more dense until about age 30 when peak bone density is attained. After that point, bones slowly start to lose density or strength. All of us lose bone mass as we age, but if we do not take the necessary measures, bone strength can be eroded so much that we run the risk of debilitating hip and spinal fractures. By the time symptoms of osteoporosis such as fractures, back pain, loss in height, or stooped posture appear, the condition is well advanced.
Prevent Bone Loss
Prevention is the best treatment. Even if you already have osteoporosis, take these steps to help prevent your bones from becoming weaker. You may even be able to replace bone that you've lost. Protect your ability to move freely and independently throughout your life with a preventive program that includes:
A calcium and vitamin D rich diet
Weight-bearing exercise
A healthy lifestyle that does not include smoking or heavy alcohol consumption
Bone density testing
Weight-Bearing and Resistance Exercise Strengthen Bones
Just as a muscle gets stronger and bigger the more you use it, a bone becomes stronger and denser when you place demands on it. If your bones are not called upon to work, such as during physical activity, they do not receive any messages that they need to be strong. Thus, a lack of exercise, particularly as you get older, may contribute to lower bone mass or density.
You cannot see your bones respond to exercise, but when you strike a tennis ball or land on your feet after jumping, chemical messengers tell your arm and leg bones to be ready to handle that weight and impact again. If you were to x-ray the arms of a tennis player, you would see that the bones in the playing arm are bigger and denser than the bones in the other arm.
Two types of exercises are important for building and maintaining bone mass and density: weight-bearing and resistance exercises. Weight-bearing exercises are those in which your bones and muscles work against gravity. This is any exercise in which your feet and legs are bearing your weight. Jogging, walking, stair climbing, dancing and soccer are examples of weight-bearing exercise with different degrees of impact. Swimming and bicycling are not weight-bearing.
The second type of exercises are resistance exercises or activities that use muscular strength to improve muscle mass and strengthen bone. These activities include weight lifting, such as using free weights and weight machines found at gyms and health clubs. Most weight-bearing and resistance exercises place health demands on bone. Daily activities and most sports involve a combination of these two types of exercises. Thus, an active lifestyle filled with varied physical activities strengthens muscles and improves bone strength.
Get Enough Calcium and Vitamin D
Both are essential for building peak bone mass when you're young and preventing bone loss as you age. Your skeleton contains 99 percent of your body's calcium. If your body doesn't get enough calcium, it will steal it from your bones. Clinical studies show that taking calcium and vitamin D supplements reduces your risk of hip and spine fractures.
Calcium is the mineral that helps give our bones the strength and stiffness to carry us around and protect our internal organs. Healthy bones go through a continual cycle of remodeling as parts of the bones are reabsorbed and then rebuilt. Without sufficient calcium, our bones can't grow properly, nor can they maintain their strength as we age. To get adequate calcium in your diet, be sure to eat dairy products like milk, cheese, and yogurt. Green, leafy vegetables like kale, turnip greens, and collard greens contain lots of calcium, as do almonds, sardines, salmon, tofu, and hazelnuts.
It might surprise you to hear that certain kinds of sea vegetables (seaweeds) are very rich in calcium - more so even than dairy products. You may be wrinkling your nose, but if you like Japanese food, you're in luck. Sushi comes wrapped in nori seaweed and lots of restaurants that serve miso soup use sea vegetables as flavoring. Many Japanese restaurants also serve a "seaweed salad" that includes a mixture of different kinds of sea vegetables.
Foods like orange juice, dry cereal, and bread are often fortified with calcium. Check your food labels to see just how much calcium has been added. Most people, especially those with or at risk for osteoporosis, should take a calcium supplement in addition to eating calcium-rich foods.
Calcium supplements come in a wide variety of dosage forms, including tablets, chewable tablets, capsules, powders, and liquids. The total recommended daily requirement for calcium is 1000 mg per day.
Vitamin D
Bones also need help from vitamin D. Vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium by moving the calcium from your digestive tract to your bloodstream and eventually into your bones. Vitamin D also works in your kidneys to rescue calcium that would otherwise be passed out of the body in the urine.
Vitamin D is manufactured in your skin when you're out in direct sunlight. Of course, with the fear of skin cancer comes the use of sunscreen, which diminishes your exposure and thus your skin's vitamin D production. But as little as 10 to 15 minutes of direct sunlight on your hands, arms, and face three times a week can give you a good dose of vitamin D. You can get vitamin D from foods such as egg yolks, saltwater fish, and liver. Vitamin D is often added to milk and margarine.
Unfortunately, as we age, our body's ability to make vitamin D through our skin decreases. In addition, as we get older our kidneys often don't function as well as they once did and may no longer be as capable of processing vitamin D properly. If you are over 60 years of age or older, or are at risk for or have osteoporosis, you should probably start taking a vitamin D supplement. The total recommended daily requirement for Vitamin D is 400 ICU.
Other Nutrients That Support Healthy Bones
Your bones can benefit from more than just calcium and vitamin D. In fact, there are a number of additional components that all play an important role in bone development and maintenance. And they all support the role that calcium plays in building strong bones.
Additional bone-friendly nutrients and their sources:
More and more it seems that exercise is the best medicine. Regular workouts with weights not only build muscle, fight heart disease and reduce stress, but will pre-empt the onset of osteoporosis in both women and men. Whether you are 14, 40, or 60, it is never too soon or too late to prevent bone loss. You can start right now to strengthen your bones and increase your reserve of healthy bone mass.