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BONE CARE |
It is true that with increase in age all people have bone problems. But there's a lot you can do to protect your bones from diseases. To protect your bones you do need calcium in your diet, but you also need to keep calcium in your bones.
- Do Routine Exercise - Exercise is important for many reasons, including keeping bones strong. Active people tend to keep calcium in their bones, while sedentary people lose calcium.
- Get vitamin D from the Sun or supplements - Vitamin D controls your body’s use of calcium. About 15 minutes of sunlight on your skin each day normally produces all the vitamin D you need. If you get little or no sun exposure, you can get vitamin D from any multiple vitamins. Vitamin D is often added to milk, but the amount added is not always well controlled.
- Eat greens, beans, or fortified foods to get calcium. The most healthful calcium sources are green leafy vegetables and legumes, or greens and beans for short. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, collards, kale, mustard greens, Swiss chard, and other greens are loaded with highly absorbable calcium and a host of other healthful nutrients. Many people also prefer calcium supplements, which are now widely available. Moreover, dairy products do contain calcium, but it is accompanied by animal proteins, lactose sugar, animal growth factors, occasional drugs and contaminants, and a substantial amount of fat and cholesterol in all but the defatted versions.
- Avoiding excess salt - Calcium in bones tends to dissolve into the bloodstream, and then pass through the kidneys into the urine. Sodium (salt) in the foods you eat can greatly increase calcium loss through the kidneys. If you reduce your sodium intake to one to two grams per day, you will hold onto calcium better. To do that, avoid salty snack foods and canned goods with added sodium, and keep salt use low on the stove and at the table.
- Eat more vegetables – Don’t intake to much animal protein like fish, poultry, red meat, eggs, and dairy products because these tends to leak calcium from the bones and encourages its passage into the urine. On the contrary, plant protein such as beans, grains, and vegetables does not appear to have this effect.
- Stop smoking - Smokers lose calcium, too.A study of identical twins showed that, if one twin had been a long-term smoker and the other had not, the smoker had more than a 40 percent higher risk of a fracture.
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| Neglecting bone health can lead to Osteoporosis. The best insurance against osteoporosis is to reach the highest bone density possible by your 30s and to minimize bone loss after that. |
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