Q: My aunt suffers from terrible osteoporosis and having seen her suffering I don’t want to head down the same road. Please could you tell me what essential nutrients I need to be eating to keep my bones healthy and strong?

A: Our bodies need a wide range of different nutrients, vitamins and minerals to maintain healthy bones, so as well as eating a healthy diet I do recommend taking a quality multi vitamin and mineral every day to ensure against deficiencies.

The most important nutrients for your bones are without doubt calcium, magnesium and vitamin D so be sure that you eat foods rich in these nutrients.  Trace minerals such as boron and manganese also play a role in calcium metabolism. Vitamin B6 is also used to provide tensile strength and structure of proteins in bone tissue.

Calcium is the key component of bone, and essential for bone health throughout our lives, regardless or our age, sex and lifestyle. Calcium is found in dairy products but don’t forget that you can also get plenty of calcium from dark green leafy vegetables, like broccoli, fish with bones, tofu, nuts, seeds and oranges.

Vitamin D is necessary for healthy bones and teeth because it helps maintain blood levels of calcium, which it does by increasing calcium absorption and uptake from food, as well as controlling how much calcium we lose in our urine. When more calcium is needed than is available to us in our diet, Vitamin D transfers calcium from our bones to our bloodstream. Much of our vitamin D is synthesised in our skin on exposure to sunlight – however we may also need additional supplies in our diet. Dietary traces of Vitamin D include: avocado, egg yolks, butter and fish oil.

Like vitamin D, magnesium is essential for calcium to be absorbed properly in our bodies and bone density to be maintained. About 60% of the magnesium in our body can be found in our bones. Good dietary sources are artichokes, nuts, beans and shellfish.   (I use OsteoPlus in the clinic which contains calcium, magnesium, boron, zinc, vitamin D and digestive enzyme to maximise absorption.)

 

Finally, as well as eating a healthy, bone building diet a regular exercise programme is crucial for warding off osteoporosis. This is because the more physically active we are, the more bone we will build. Aim for a minimum of 30 minutes exercise five times a week.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 1:30 am and is filed under Ask Marilyn, Osteoporosis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.