Build Strong, Healthy Bones -- It’s Never Too Early to Start!

Dare to Dairy
Women with the strongest bones are the ones who get at least half of their calcium (roughly 600 milligrams daily) in the form of food, say University of Auckland researchers. Meeting that mark is surprisingly easy -- you get 300 milligrams for every cup of yogurt or milk, 1-1/2 cups of cottage cheese or 1-1/2 ounces of hard cheese you eat. If your belly gets riled when you dig into dairy, start small (by adding 2 ounces per meal) and gradually build up your daily dose. In a study at Purdue University in Indiana, lactose-intolerant women who tried this trick were enjoying a dairy-rich, without belly backlash, within two months. You can train your digestive tract to break down dairy properly. You just can’t randomly hit it with a huge dose of dairy and expect it to adjust, explains Michael B. Zemel, Ph.D., director of the Nutrition Institute at Knoxville’s University of Tennessee.

Supplement Smartly
Calcium supplements can protect your bones without raising your risk of heart dis-ease as long as you follow a few simple safety rules. First, limit yourself to 600 to 700 milligrams daily -- that’s the dose that builds bone strength, without damaging the lining of arteries, say Swedish researchers. Also, always pair calcium pills with food so they’ll be absorbed at a slow, steady rate. "The artery damage occurs when calcium levels in the blood suddenly spike -- and that’s a common occurrence when people take high doses of calcium on an empty stomach," explains Ian Reid, M.D., a professor of medicine and endocrinology at the University of Auckland.

Soak Up Some Sun
Getting 15 minutes of sunshine just three times a week can cut your risk of bone fractures as much as 33 percent, say researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. The one caveat: You’ll get far better results if you don’t apply sunscreen until those 15 minutes are up, say Boston University doctors. Their research shows that even paltry lotions (like an SPF 8) can block the skin’s ability to produce vitamin D by as much as 97 percent. "When your body is exposed to UV light, it produces vitamin D -- a nutrient that’s essential for shuttling calcium into bone tissue," says Michael Holick, M.D., a professor at the Boston University School of Medicine. "If you’re deficient in D, your bones will become weak and brittle…even if you’re eating a great diet!"

Pack in the Prunes
Eating six of them daily cuts bone thinning in half. Plus, prunes (or, dried plums) kick-start new bone growth in as little as three months, according to researchers at Florida State University in Tallahassee. The credit goes to boron -- a hard-to-find trace mineral that helps lock calcium and vitamin D into bone tissue so they can’t leach out over time, says Michael Hirt, M.D., medical director of The Center for Inte-grative Medicine in Tarzana, CA. Prunes are one of nature’s richest food sources of boron. But if you’re not fond of this fruit, eating a daily 1/2 cup of boron-rich almonds, hazelnuts, raisins or dried apricots can also do the trick, says Dr. Hirt.

Exercise Precaution

Hoping to strengthen your bones with exercise? You’ll cut your risk of fractures by 18 percent or more if you start with tai chi instead of bone-jarring sports such as tennis, squash and basketball, say researchers at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. Gentle impact allows bones to grow and strengthen safely, whereas more vigorous sports can result in nasty fractures for folks new to the workout scene, explains Chwan-Li Shen, Ph.D., an asso-ciate professor of pathology at Texas Tech. If you’re not a fan of tai chi, or you don’t live near a community center that offers this ancient martial art, you can kick-start your bone-building plan safely with 20-minute sessions of walking, cycling or swimming.

Root for Veggies
These knobby roots, stems and bulbs are rich in strontium -- a trace mineral that can strengthen your bones as quickly and effectively as calcium does. Because strontium and calcium are so similar chemically, your bones are perfectly happy to use strontium to build new bone tissue whenever calcium is in short supply! Enjoy one cup of potatoes, parsnips, turnips, radishes or carrots daily for best results. An added perk: Root veggies are packed with vitamin K -- a nutrient that builds a strong mesh-like framework inside bones to make them tougher, say researchers at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center in Boston, MA.

Have a Beer
Silicon kick-starts the formation of healthy new bone tissue, and studies at the University of California, Davis, show that beer is one of the best possible sources of this mineral! “The palest malts actually have the highest silicon content,” adds lead re-searcher Charles W. Bamforth, Ph.D., professor of malting and brewing sciences at the UC Davis. “In fact, they can contain up to four times more silicon than darker beers!” The study-proven dose: One 12-ounce bottle daily. Other good sources of silicon include wheat bran, alfalfa, beets, bell peppers, brown rice, liver and green leafy veggies…but they are not nearly as much fun.

Maximize Your Magnesium
“Despite all the attention calcium gets, mag-nesium is turning out to be just as important (and perhaps even more crucial) for break-resistant bones,” says nutrition researcher Alan Gaby, M.D., co-author of Natural Medi-cine, Optimal Wellness. Turns out calcium makes bones strong, but magnesium makes them flexible and shock-absorbent -- and that’s the key to weathering small tumbles without major bone breaks, say researchers at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Already, half of the magnesium in your body is being used to keep your bones in tip-top shape. And according to University of California, Los Angeles researchers, just taking 400 milligrams of magnesium in supplement form daily can help prevent frac-tures for up to 71 percent of women.

Make Time for Tea
Recent studies at Texas Tech show just sipping 32 ounces of green tea daily can put the brakes on bone thinning in as little as one month -- and this protective trick works even for postmenopausal women who are at high risk of developing brittle bones. Credit goes to green tea’s antioxi-dants -- specifically, a type called polyphe-nols. “These natural plant compounds dampen inflammation in your bloodstream, says lead researcher Dr. Shen. “Chronic inflammation is incredibly damaging to bone tissue -- so keeping inflammation in check is a great way to prevent bone thin-ning.”

Chill Out!
Women struggling with chronic stress, anxiety or blue moods have bone densities up to 15 percent lower than folks who feel happier and more relaxed. And researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel have figured out why. Their studies show that when your blood levels of cortisol (the damaging stress hormone) stay constantly high, it dampens the activity of bone-building osteoblast cells and speeds the loss of calcium and magnesium from bone tissue. To keep your cortisol production in check, carve out half an hour of “me” time each day to relax and pamper yourself. Go soak in a hot tub, nap, meditate, read…do anything that helps you unwind and calms your nerves, suggests Dr. Hirt.

Kearns, B. 31 July 2012. Retrieved from http://www.ivillage.com/build-strong-healthy-bones-it-s-never-too-early-start/4-b-477224.