Good Health Blog

Three factors essential for keeping your bones healthy throughout your life are:

Adequate amounts of calcium
Adequate amounts of vitamin D
Regular exercise

Calcium

Good sources of calcium include:

Low-fat dairy products
Dark green leafy vegetables
Canned salmon or sardines with bones
Soy products, such as tofu
Calcium-fortified cereals and orange juice

If you find it difficult to get enough calcium from your diet, consider taking calcium supplements. But too much calcium has been linked to heart problems and kidney stones.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D is necessary for your body to absorb calcium. Many people get adequate amounts of vitamin D from sunlight, but this may not be a good source if you live in high latitudes, if you’re housebound, or if you regularly use sunscreen or you avoid the sun entirely because of the risk of skin cancer.

Scientists don’t yet know the optimal daily dose of vitamin D. A good starting point for adults is 600 to 800 international units (IU) a day, through food or supplements. If your blood levels of vitamin D are low, your doctor may suggest higher doses. Teens and adults can safely take up to 4,000 international units (IU) a day.

Exercise

Exercise can help you build strong bones and slow bone loss. Exercise will benefit your bones no matter when you start, but you’ll gain the most benefits if you start exercising regularly when you’re young and continue to exercise throughout your life.

Combine strength training exercises with weight-bearing exercises. Strength training helps strengthen muscles and bones in your arms and upper spine, and weight-bearing exercises — such as walking, jogging, running, stair climbing, skipping rope, skiing and impact-producing sports — mainly affect the bones in your legs, hips and lower spine.

Swimming, cycling and exercising on machines such as elliptical trainers can provide a good cardiovascular workout, but because such exercises are low impact, they’re not as helpful for improving bone health as weight-bearing exercises are.

Most children have no problem developing normal healthy bones. In fact, children in Japan, China, and other countries consume much lower levels of calcium than their Australian  peers and still develop strong, healthy bones. That’s because the human body is an efficient regulator of bone growth.

Just like our hair, skin, and lungs, bone is a living tissue that is constantly being built, broken down, and made anew. Throughout life, bones are taking up and releasing calcium and other minerals, a cycle that is influenced by a variety of factors, including diet, exercise habits, hormones, genetics, and certain diseases. According to two recent reviews of bone health in childhood, the largest influence on this cycle is genetics, accounting for 60 to 80 percent of the differences, with hormones related to growth and puberty second in importance.

Children generally build bone at a slightly higher pace than they break it down. After adolescence, this cycle begins to shift a little so that bone building and breakdown generally keep pace with each other. Later in life, this bone-remodeling cycle tends to head in the reverse direction—with more bone being broken down than is rebuilt. Of course, the extent of this weakening can range from barely noticeable to a serious condition called osteoporosis, depending on many lifestyle and dietary habits.

The minerals in a child’s skeleton are completely replaced (or recycled) about five times between childhood and her or his 55th birthday. Focusing on those actions that promote bone building and those that decrease bone breakdown will effectively improve bone health.

Promoting Bone Building

Bones are a matrix of collagen (the same material used for building joints and other body tissues), water, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and other minerals. Special cells are responsible for making new bone. Here are the most important steps your child can take to help keep these bone-building cells busy:

• Get moving! Play and exercise every day.
• Eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables.
• Get vitamin D from the sun or from supplements.
• Get calcium from plant foods and fortified products.

Avoiding bone loss

A normal part of the bone-recycling process is the breakdown and release of calcium and other minerals into the bloodstream. These minerals are filtered through the kidneys and lost through the urine. Minimizing this loss is a smart strategy for protecting bones. Here are important steps you and your child can take to avoid excess bone loss:

• Limit salty foods.
• Avoid protein from animal sources.
• Keep children away from smoking.
• Avoid caffeine.

With a few simple guidelines you can build healthy bones in your children!

Have you had a fall recently? If so it is important to discuss it with your Doctor if the reason was not apparent or you have some risk factors which could mean a fall having ongoing consequences.

Falls can be very serious if you are elderly or are at risk of low-trauma fractures (osteoporosis, Vitamin D or calcium deficient). They may not be due to just being clumsy – sometimes falls can be due to medical conditions such as inappropriate blood pressure drop, balance disorders, vision issues, muscle weakness or delayed reflexes.

To help prevent falls, older people need to be encouraged to undertake regular exercise (especially balance training), have regular vision assessments, consider having an in home occupational therapist do a home safety assessment and ensure their Doctor is aware of the problem.

A fall a day will not keep the Doctor away. Hasten for a check up.

Osteoporosis is a common condition affecting many millions of people in which bones become fragile and brittle leading to a higher risk of fractures, than in normal bone. Osteoporosis occurs when bones lose minerals, such as calcium, more quickly than the body can replace them, leading to a loss of bone thickness (bone density or mass).

As bones become thinner and less dense, even a minor bump or fall can cause serious fractures. These are known as ‘minimal trauma’ fractures. Any bone can be affected by osteoporosis, but the most common sites are the hip, spine, wrist, upper arm, ribs or forearm. Fractures in the spine due to osteoporosis can result in losing height or changes in posture (and in more serious cases it can result in a Dowager’s hump in the back).

Osteoporosis usually has no symptoms until a fracture occurs – this is why osteoporosis is often called the ‘silent disease’.

It is therefore very important for anyone with specific risk factors for osteoporosis to be investigated by their doctor. It is also important for anyone over 50 who experiences a fracture from a minor bump or fall to be investigated to check if the fracture was caused by osteoporosis.

Fractures can lead to chronic pain, disability, loss of independence and even premature death. So preventing fractures and managing bone health becomes a priority.

Prevention – as always – is the key here!

Have a well balanced diet including adequate intake of calcium.

Do appropriate exercises (eDoc Subscribers receive the recommendations based on age and sex).

Get adequate levels of vitamin D

Make lifestyle changes – stop smoking, minimise alcohol and caffiene intake.

this project started in 2008 with a concept to bring quality health advice direct to the public. After a year of reviewing preventative health recommendations and trying to design a format that is patient friendly and undertandable, eDoc.net is now ready to go onto the web. Many of the preventative health and screening protocols are designed in ‘doctor-speak’ and thus make little sense to patients. I am writing the explanations and getting my 16 year old daughter and local tradesman friends to read them before I post them. If they cannot understand what is needed then I re-work the explanation until it is useful.