4 Proven Ways To Stronger Bones

Your bones help keep you upright. Without them, you’d just be a pile of mush. And who wants to be a pile of mush?

But on a more serious note, osteoporosis is a debilitating disease. You find yourself in incredible pain because your bones can fracture easily if you stumble and fall. Not to mention, you shrink and have poor posture because your bones can’t support the rest of your body. It’s not something you want to have to deal with. The good news is that it’s incredibly easy to avoid.

These 3 vitamins and minerals are the best for helping you build and maintain strong, healthy bones. But there’s one strategy that can really help maintain your bone density.

Calcium

It’s always easiest to start in the most obvious spot. Advertisements used to tell us that milk does a body good. And our teachers taught it was calcium that was responsible for strong bones. But the fact of the matter is that calcium is really only one part of the equation.

The path to bad health, unfortunately, can be paved with good intentions. If, by chance, you leave one of the upcoming vitamins out, you’ll risk hardening your arteries.

Shoot for about 1g of calcium a day. If you’re over 50, bump it up to 1200mg per day.

Vitamin D

Part of the reason milk does a body good is because it also contains vitamin D. Vitamin D helps increase your absorption of calcium. As you age, your body has a harder time getting calcium out of the food you eat and the supplements you’re taking. Your small intestine just doesn’t absorb it as well and your kidneys have a hard time keeping it in your body. Vitamin D can help mitigate that.

The best source of vitamin D, of course, is the sun. But around this time of year, it’s nearly impossible to obtain vitamin D from the sun if you live in the northern part of the US. Your other options include eating fatty fish and taking a supplement. Since you’re not getting vitamin D from the sun anymore, you’ll want to take between 4,000 and 5,000 IU per day.

Vitamin K2

All that vitamin D and calcium you just consumed can decide to go wherever it thinks it’s needed – if you don’t take it with vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 is a director. A lighthouse. It’s your best friend when it comes to bone health and that’s because in addition to calcifying your arteries, you can actually make your bones more brittle by taking too much calcium.

Vitamin K2 can direct your osteoblasts (forms bone) and osteoclasts (breaks down deposits created by osteoblasts) to help you build and maintain strong, healthy bones. You need about 45 mg per day and you can get it from natto (best source because natto provides additional benefits, but it’s an acquired taste), liver, meat, and hard cheeses.

Exercise

In the same way you build muscle during exercise, you help maintain your bone density. It can be something as simple as walking. But resistance training holds the upper hand. When you train with weights, you’re stressing your bones. In order to adapt, your bones have to become stronger. So they put the osteoblasts to work to increase the density of your bones.

The key is to do everything safely though. If you break a bone, it’s obviously going to set you back.

If you’re unsure of how to do an exercise, ask someone who does. People are generally more than happy to help. If you haven’t exercised in a while, or at all, start with a light weight and get the form down first. If your bodyweight is good enough help you maintain your bone density, then lifting just the bar will also be good enough.

References

http://www.health.harvard.edu/womens-health/two-keys-to-strong-bones-calcium-and-vitamin-d
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27437760