Q: I have been diagnosed with an early menopause (early 40s) and have been told I have low bone density.  Is it possible to increase bone density in your opinion or just maintain the bone density you have and stop it getting worse?

A: This is one of those situations where it is ‘never too late’. You can always make improvements in bone density no matter what age you are, although for some women that increase may be smaller than others. It requires though a combination of approaches including dietary changes, vitamin and mineral supplementation and exercise. Obviously the sooner you can make changes the more chance of putting on a greater amount of bone density. 

First of all take a look at your diet and make sure that you are not consuming a lot of foods and drink that can deplete your bones because of their acid effect on the body. I have covered this aspect of bone helath in great detail in my book ‘Osteoporosis – the silent epidemic’.

One of calcium’s roles in the body is to act as a neutraliser. When you eat too much acid food your body calls up calcium reserves from your bones to counteract the acidity. We know that women who consume the most acid-producing diets have four times as many hip fractures as those whose diets are the least acid producing.  One of the most highly acid-forming substances, which cause most calcium to be leached from your bones, is protein, particularly in red meat. 

 

The best way to make your diet more alkaline is simply to aim to have more alkaline-forming foods (fruit and vegetables) each day than acid (animal protein) and choose good quality animal protein like fish or eggs. You also need to watch what you drink as caffeine causes you to lose calcium and soft fizzy drinks will also cause a leeching effect of calcium from the bones.

 

You need to add in certain vitamins and minerals to make sure that you are ‘feeding’ your bones.  The first nutrient that comes to mind is calcium. But many other nutrients are equally crucial for healthy bones, and these include magnesium, vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc and boron. 

 

• Calcium – is essential for bone health and not only improves bone density but also reduces the risk of fractures.  Choose supplements that contain calcium citrate rather than calcium carbonate.  Calcium carbonate is literally chalk and a difficult form of calcium to absorb.  Calcium citrate is almost 30% more absorbable than calcium carbonate.
• Magnesium – helps to metabolise calcium and converts vitamin D to the active form necessary to ensure that calcium is efficiently absorbed. 
• Vitamin D – one of the important ‘bone’ vitamins and it is now thought that having good levels of vitamin D is more important than calcium.
• Vitamin C – important in the manufacture of collagen, which is a sort of ‘cement’ that holds the bone matrix together.   Choose vitamin C as ascorbate rather than the acidic form – ascorbic acid.
• Boron – an important mineral in relation to osteoporosis as it plays a crucial part in the conversion of vitamin D into its active form, which, in turn, is necessary for calcium absorption.

 

(I use a good ‘bone’ supplement in the clinic called OsteoPlus which contains all of the above nutrients plus digestive enzymes for maximum absorption – see the Resources Page)

 

And last by no means least you musst include exercise. When it comes to bones and exercise, it is definitely a case of  ‘use it or lose it’. Use a combination of weight-bearing exercises like walking and dancing and weight resistance like bicep curls and lunges to creat mechanical stress which helps put calcium in the bones.

 

 

Sweet potatoes are one of the oldest vegetables known to be consumed by humans and research dates this vegetable back to prehistoric times.

The sweet potato is native to Central America and was bought to Europe by Christopher Columbus in 1492.  By the 16^th century they were introduced to the Philippines, Africa, India and also to the US. 

Sweet potatoes belong to the Convolvulaceae or morning glory plant family and are different from yams, which they are often confused, which is a root vegetable belonging to the Dioscoreae family.

There are about 400 different varieties of sweet potato and the skin and flesh can vary in colour with some white, yellow, orange, deep purple and pink varieties.  The most common being the yellow-orange variety which is slightly longer than an ordinary potato and tapered at the ends.

Sweet potatoes are packed full of nutrients with excellent sources of beta-carotene, vitamin C, manganese, vitamin B6, potassium and iron. They are also a good source of dietary fibre. The orange colour is due to the beta-carotene content which gives the sweet potato valuable anti-oxidant properties.  The body can produce vitamin A from beta-carotene and it is though that the beta-carotene from sweet potatoes is more easily used by the body than that from dark, leafy vegetables.

The purple sweet potato has been found to have the high antioxidant activity of all the sweet potatoes and in one study the antioxidant activity (anthocyanins coming from the purple colour) was over three times higher than that of blueberries.

Try to buy organic sweet potatoes so that if you are just having them as a steamed vegetable, you do not have to peel because as with most fruit and vegetables most of the goodness is in the skin and with sweet potatoes the antioxidant activity is three times higher in the skin than in the flesh.

 

Ingredients

750g sweet potatoes, organic where possible, peeled

2 tbsp olive oil

1 small onion, sliced

1 garlic clove, crushed

2 eggs, beaten

100g organic cheese (optional) or carrots instead.

Method

Grate the sweet potatoes, coarsely and put in tea towel or paper towel to absorb any excess moisture.  Put the sweet potato in a mixing bowl.  Fry the onion and garlic with half the olive oil in a pan until the onion is soft and golden.  Add the onion to the sweet potatoes in the bowl.  Add the grated egg and half the cheese.  If you would rather not use cheese then cook some carrots in boiling water until almost soft, allow to cool and then grate the carrots and add to the potato mix.  Mix thoroughly.

 

Divide the mixture into four cakes and place on a well oiled baking tray and drizzle with the remaining olive oil.  Cook in a medium pre-heated oven for about 25 minutes or until golden brown.