8 THINGS TO PREVENT OR HEAL OSTEOPOROSIS

Posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 8:37 am

Osteoporosis is known as the brittle bone disease. It can affect both men and women. Osteoporosis develops slowly over many years. Recent studies show that men over 30 years old begin to lose some bone mass each year. This loss could be as much as 2% a year. This could result in brittle bones.

Here are a few tips that you should take during your younger years. They could help produce stronger bones in your later years.

(1) Get adequate calcium in your daily diet. This can be done by including foods like dairy products, dark-green leafy vegetables, salmon, and tofu.

(2) Get enough vitamin D and the trace mineral manganese.

(3) Exercise regularly. This helps to promote bone growth. It also strengthens the muscle which supports the bones.

(4) Avoid smoking, alcohol, caffeine, and high-protein foods.

(5) Aluminum

Avoid antacids that contain aluminum. Aluminum can reduce the amount of phosphorous in your bones and this could weaken them. You may also want to avoid cooking certain high acid foods in aluminum pots. This can could cause some of the aluminum to dissolve into your food.

(6) Caffeine

A number of studies have shown that caffeine can cause calcium loss. Caffeine leaches calcium from the bones and causes it to be excreted in urine. It can also prevent the digestive system from absorbing enough calcium. Thus, you should limit your intake of caffeine containing beverages. This includes, coffee, tea, and many of the popular soft drinks. You do not need to cut these items out entirely but instead limit yourself to 1 or 2 servings per day.

(7) Salt

Too much salt in your diet can have the same effect that caffeine does. It can cause the body to lose calcium in the urine.

(8) Vitamins

Recent studies have showed that Vitamin D is especially important in helping your body to prevent calcium lose.

The New England Journal of Medicine recommends calcium fortified orange juice as a great way to add calcium to your diet. The calcium citrate appears to be helpful in preventing calcium loss from the spine.

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