What Can I Do to Prevent My Bones From Weakening?
What Affects Bone Mass?
Bone mass is largely influenced by non-modifiable risk factors such as age, sex, race, and genes. In other words, you cannot control these influencers that place you at risk for developing osteoporosis. However, you can maintain your bone mass through diet and exercise. For now we will discuss nutrition, and look forward to next week's post about exercise.
The Nutrients You Need
Building or maintaining stronger bones requires three key nutrients: calcium, vitamin D, and protein. How much, you might ask? Most adults should get between 600 and 800 international units of vitamin D every day, and between 1,000 to 1,300 milligrams of calcium daily. “It's pretty easy to figure out how much calcium you're getting,” says Deborah Sellmeyer, MD. “Just from eating random, non-calcium-rich foods, your diet contains about 250 mg of calcium daily. To get up to the 1,000 milligrams you need, add more calcium-rich foods.”
Calcium
The most obvious choices include: milk, yogurt, and cheese. If these options do not work for you however, there are non-dairy options to consider like the following:
- Fortified juices
- Fortified cereal and oatmeal
- Dark leafy greens like broccoli
- Beans
- Salmon
- Almonds
The picture above includes 12 food and drink choices that you can add to your diet to increase your calcium intake.
Vitamin DOur bodies synthesize vitamin D in response to sunlight. When sunlight is not available however, there are foods that can provide this vital nutrient.
- Eggs
- Fortified cereals
- Salmon and tuna
- Fortified dairy products
- Fortified orange juice
This picture illustrates sources of the nutrient, Vitamin D.
Protein
The third and final component of strong bones is protein. Some examples of protein sources are pictured below.
Good sources of protein, as illustrated in the picture above include: legumes, nuts, chicken, eggs, fish, chickpeas, beef, and sunflower seeds.
What about Exercise?
Up next, we will tackle exercise. But first, let's focus on providing our body with these key nutrients. Until next week's blog post, happy bone maintenance!
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