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Maintaining Bone Health: Nutrition and Lifestyle Tips for Strong Bones
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Maintaining Bone Health: Nutrition and Lifestyle Tips for Strong Bones


Overview

Protecting your bone health is easier than you might believe. Learn how food, physical activity, and other lifestyle choices might affect your bone mass.

Bones serve various functions in the body, including giving structure, protecting organs, attaching muscles, and storing calcium. While it is important to develop strong and healthy bones during childhood and adolescence, you can also protect bone health as an adult.

Why is bone health essential?

Your bones are always changing—new bone is formed while old bone is broken down. When you're young, your body produces new bone faster than it degrades old bone, so your bone mass grows. Most people attain their peak bone mass around the age of thirty. Following that, bone remodeling continues; however, you lose slightly more bone mass than you acquire. How likely you are to acquire osteoporosis, a disorder that causes bones to weaken and become brittle, is determined by how much bone mass you have by the age of 30 and how quickly you lose it thereafter.

The higher your peak bone mass, the more bone you have "in the bank," lowering your risk of developing osteoporosis as you age.

How is bone health affected?

Several factors can affect bone health. As an example:

  • The level of calcium in your diet. A low calcium diet reduces bone density, causes early bone loss, and increases the risk of fractures.
  • There was physical activity. People who are physically inactive are more likely to develop osteoporosis than their more active counterparts.
  • Tobacco and alcohol consumption. According to research, tobacco use contributes to weakened bones. Similarly, having more than one alcoholic drink per day for women and two alcoholic drinks per day for men may raise the risk of osteoporosis.
  • Sex. Women have less bone tissue than men, so they are more likely to develop osteoporosis.
  • Size. You are at risk if you are extremely thin (BMI 19 or lower) or have a small body frame because you may have less bone mass to draw on as you age.
  • Age. Your bones thin and weaken as you age.
  • Racial and family history. You are most likely to develop osteoporosis if you are white or of Asian descent. Furthermore, having a parent or sibling with osteoporosis increases your risk, particularly if you have a family history of fractures.
  • The levels of hormones. Too much thyroid hormone can result in bone loss. Women's bone loss increases dramatically during menopause due to low estrogen levels. A prolonged absence of menstruation (amenorrhea) prior to menopause increases the risk of osteoporosis. Men with low testosterone levels may lose bone mass.
  • Eating disorders and other problems. Both men and women's bones weaken when they severely restrict their food intake or are underweight. In addition, weight-loss surgery and conditions like celiac disease can impair your body's ability to absorb calcium.
  • Certain medicines. Long-term use of corticosteroid medications like prednisone, cortisone, prednisolone, and dexamethasone is harmful to bones. Other drugs that may increase the risk of osteoporosis include aromatase inhibitors used to treat breast cancer, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, methotrexate, some anti-seizure medications like phenytoin (Dilantin) and phenobarbital, and proton pump inhibitors.

What can I do to maintain my bone health?

You can prevent or slow bone loss with a few simple steps. As an example:

  • Consume lots of calcium in your diet. The RDA for individuals aged 19 to 50 and men aged 51 to 70 is 1,000 milligrammes (mg) of calcium per day. For women over the age of 51 and men over the age of 71, the recommended daily dose is 1,200 mg.

Calcium-rich foods include milk, almonds, broccoli, kale, tinned salmon with bones, sardines, and soy products like tofu. If you are having difficulty getting enough calcium from your diet, talk to your doctor about taking supplements.

  • Pay close attention to vitamin D. Your body requires vitamin D to absorb calcium. For persons aged 19 to 70, the recommended daily intake of vitamin D is 600 international units (IUs). For adults aged 71 and up, the recommended daily intake increases to 800 IUs.

Oily fish, including salmon, trout, whitefish, and tuna, are excellent sources of vitamin D. Mushrooms, eggs, and fortified foods like milk and cereals are other good sources of vitamin D. Sunlight also aids the body's manufacture of vitamin D. If you're concerned about obtaining enough vitamin D, talk to your doctor about supplements.

  • Include physical activity in your everyday routine. Walking, jogging, and climbing stairs are all weight-bearing exercises that can help you build strong bones and slow down bone loss.
  • Stay away from drugs and alcohol. Do not smoke. If you are a woman, avoid consuming more than one alcoholic beverage per day. Men should limit their alcohol consumption to no more than two drinks each day.

Conclusion

Consult your doctor if you are concerned about your bone health or have risk factors for osteoporosis, such as a recent bone fracture. He or she may prescribe a bone density test. The results will assist your doctor in assessing your bone density and pace of bone loss. Your doctor can determine whether you are a candidate for medication to help decrease bone loss after reviewing this information and your risk factors.

Dr. Rohit Lamba, Head of the Department & Senior Consultant

Bone, Joint Replacement And Orthopaedics

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