Women’s Health Blog

Strengthening Your Bones

Bones provide the overall structure and connective tissue that keeps your skin and other organs intact. Without bones, you are unable to lead a physically active life. Fractured bones are always extremely painful, and they compromise quality of life until they are repaired. It is then exceedingly important to maintain healthy bones throughout your lives. The care begins from the time you are young and continuing through the senior years.

A persons bones are at their strongest at ages of 20 to 30 years old. After that, you lose bone continuously for the rest of your lives. Any activity helps keep bones strong, but exercises that put extra pressure on specific areas can give extra benefits. Weightlifting is a very good exercise for strengthening bones. You are never too old to start an exercise program that includes weight training to strengthen your bones. Aim to get 30 minutes daily of moderate exercise like walking, aerobics, or jogging to promote bone health and strengthen them. When you exercise, muscles move against your bones and this will make them both stronger. It does this because it causes new bone tissue to form.

Your bones are constantly changing. Doctors dont understand or know why bone remodeling happens. It takes about 2 to 3 months for a full cycle of bone remodeling to complete. When you are young, your body builds faster. By the time reach your mid 30s, you reach your peak bone mass. Bone remodeling doesnt stop, however. It simply slows down after your peak.

Keeping your bones healthy is a must. It is just as important to starts as soon as you can so that you can prevent any problems later in life. Aside from exercise and weight training, you also need to take in a lot of calcium. By the age of 17, most people have about 90% of their adult bone mass built. As you age, your body will gradually remove and replace small increments of calcium from your bones. If your body cant replace all the calcium it took, then your bones will become weaker. After the age of 18, your body stops taking in calcium. The only way to move forward is to maintain the supply that is already there.

As you all well know, the best source of calcium is milk and dairy products. These products are easy for the body to absorb. Vitamin D helps the body absorb the calcium. Dark green veggies such as broccoli and spinach have a lot of calcium in them as well.

Bones just really need calcium and other nutrients to become and remain strong. Lacking proper nutrition makes everything go downhill. Eventually the bones will begin to decay. This, of course, can lead to serious problems like fractures, falls, and immobility. As the medical community becomes more knowledgeable, they will keep informing people about simple but basic lifestyle changes that can have a positive impact on your skeletal framework.

Ask your doctor what you can do at whatever stage of life you are at to protect and preserve your bones. Following a general plan should have a good effect on your bones. Avoid osteoporosis and take care of what you have before its too late.