Bone Health

Paying more attention to your bone health becomes more important as we age. This pillar is about keeping up your bones dense without creating additional health disturbances along the way. Learn about the ways you may be creating deficiencies or an overabundance of nutrients in your systems keeping up your bone health. Find out how to address degradation of bone density before it happens while keeping your nutrient intake balanced to avoid overdoing it.

Bone Health will include the following topics:

Nutrients to Support
Exercises To Build Density

Balancing Calcium Intake
Staying Stronger Longer

An Introduction to Bone Health

This pillar will explore the issue of bone health and how eating the right foods can actually increase bone density, making bones stronger and less susceptible to injury and breaks.

As people get older, it becomes more important to pay attention to bone health. Consuming too few, or in some instances, too many nutrients can impact bone health. Maintaining a balanced diet is particularly important for protecting bone health and density. The attached PDF provides information about how the aging process causes changes to bones.

Fortunately, simple lifestyle changes can help to protect, maintain, and improve bone health, as Dr. Carolyn Dean can attest. A healthy, balanced diet from a young age helps people to build healthy bones, promoting bone health throughout the course of the individual’s lifetime.

The Impact of the Aging Process on Bone Health from Dr Carolyn Dean

Calcium and vitamin D are both integral to bone health, the latter helping the body to absorb calcium. Poor bone health can result in development of conditions like osteoporosis and rickets, increasing the risk of broken bones from a fall in later life.

Consuming a healthy, balanced diet rich in key vitamins and minerals provides the body with the building blocks it needs for healthy bones. Learn more about the minerals required for bone health by viewing the attached infographic.

It is, however, possible to get too much of a good thing, with research suggesting that too much vitamin A can actually trigger an increased risk of bone fractures. As a precaution, experts recommend consuming liver, a food item rich in vitamin A, no more than once a week.

In addition to diet, exercise also plays an important role in bone heath. A report from the Mayo Clinic suggests that people who are physically inactive face a higher risk of osteoporosis compared with their more-active counterparts.

Lifestyle choices such as alcohol and tobacco intake can also take their toll on bone health, as can hormone levels, with too much thyroid hormone linked to bone loss.

Dr. Carolyn Dean advocates a proactive approach to protecting bone health. Maintaining a diet rich in calcium and vitamin D, avoiding substance abuse, and including physical activity in daily routines have all been shown to have a positive impact. The embedded video highlights the various ways that exercise can help to promote physical and mental health and wellbeing.