Q: I thought that oatcakes were a healthy snack, but was surprised to see that the nutritional information on the packet shows them to be high in calories, fat and particularly saturated fat.  They are even labelled as red for fat under the traffic light scheme.  Should I avoid them and can you suggest any alternatives?

Wants to remain anonymous

A: Depending on the brand of oatcake they can include different ingredients.  Although they are a savoury food some will even contain sugar.  And then of course the fat content will change if cheese has been added to the oatcake.  In general, one oatcake is only 43 calories which is not a lot at all when you think that the guideline daily amount for women is 2000.  The oatcakes I have at home contain sunflower oil which is unsaturated but also palm oil which is saturated.  The guidelines for saturated fat is that a product is high (red traffic light) if it contains more than 5g of saturated fat per 100g.  100g of oatcakes which is nearly half the box contains 4.4g per 100g, so it is on the high side., but it is also the amount you eat of that food that is also important. 

There has been controversy over whether the saturated fat in palm oil can increase the risk of heart disease but research has shown that palm oil on its own does not increase cholesterol. But if the diet also contains trans fats (as well as the palm oil) then total cholesterol increases along with LDL (‘bad’) cholesterol and HDL (‘good’) cholesterol decreases.

Oatcakes do have a low glycemic index , which means that they are release energy slowly and do not cause fast rises in blood sugar so I would suggest that you continue to eat them, but as with anything, in moderation. 

 

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.

 

 

Q: What is the best herbal product for a lady with low bone density who has been diagnosed with an early menopause at 42 years?  She wants to try and get her periods back. 

A: If there is no medical reason for the early menopause, it is well worth following a nutritional approach to try and get the periods back. A while back a lady of 40 came into the clinic because her periods had stopped suddenly and she was getting hot flushes.  She had been to see her doctor and blood tests showed she was menopausal. I asked her what had been happening around the time that her periods ceased and she said that she had been made redundant and had also lost her father.

I explained that the aim would be to ensure that she was as healthy as possible, addressing any problems with her diet, checking out any vitamin and mineral deficiencies, working on her stress levels and using some herbs to help balance her hormones. Within a couple of months, her periods returned and a further test at her doctors showed that she was no longer ‘menopausal’.

During times of stress, the body starts to shut down the reproductive system in order to give that woman the resources she needs to cope with what is going on.

Agnus castus is very much the herb of choice when trying to bring back periods as it has a balancing effect on hormones.  (The one I would suggest is Agnus Castus Plus which also contains other helpful herbs – see Resources the Page).