Choosing healthy diet isn’t only about maintaining ideal weight or reducing intake of bad cholesterol. But, you should also make sure that you have healthy bones. Bone health is often ignored and only become a real concern when we get older. With improper lifestyle, it’s likely for us to develop osteoporosis:
- Drink milk regularly: Calcium is essential for achieving strong bone. Calcium is also essential for other functions, such as regulating heart beat. When you don’t have enough calcium in your body, calcium will be pulled out of your bones. First symptoms of osteoporosis often appear when you reach the age 50. On younger adults, their bodies are able to establish calcium stores from dairy food. However, as we get older, we lose this capability. Once we reach the peak bone mass phase, our bone condition will naturally decline. For gaining stronger bones, make sure that you drink milk regularly. A couple glasses of milk each day can help to maintain ideal level of calcium in your body, despite the declining ability of your body to do that.
- Get enough vitamin D: Vitamin D is often called as the “calcium helper”. With vitamin D, your body can better absorb calcium into the bones an calcium can be properly regulated inside your body. The lack of vitamin D could be associated with increased incidence of osteoporosis. Unfortunately, it is relatively tricky to get enough vitamin D inside our body. However, the easiest way to do this is by getting enough exposure of sunlight. About 15 minutes of direct skin exposure of sunlight every day, should be enough to help your body convert pro-vitamin D into the active vitamin D. You can get pro-vitamin D from fatty fish, supplements and fortified foods.
- Exercise regularly: Weight bearing exercise isn’t only good for your muscles and heart, but also your bones. Muscle strengthening exercises will also make your bones stronger. Push ups, weight lifting and exercises using elastic resistance bands should be conducive to stronger bones. If you think that you are at higher risk of osteoporosis due to genetics factors and poor lifestyle, then exercise properly will help you to strengthen your bone.
- Get other bone-building nutrients: Not only calcium and vitamin D that are useful for the health of our bone. There are also other nutrients that are good for making our bones stronger. As an example, vitamin K is good for delivering calcium to the right areas of our body, including teeth and bones. Phosphorus and magnesium can also be found in milk. It works synergistically with calcium for making our bones stronger. Other than consuming dairy products, you should also choose lean sources of protein and green leafy vegetables.
By incorporating these lifestyle changes in your daily lives, you should be able to reduce the risks of osteoporosis substantially. You should be inspired to put the health of your bone on the top. You also should contribute in raising the awareness on the health of your bone within family and community.
