Good to the Bone

Whether you're 17 or 70, now is the time to protect yourself from osteoporosis. Weight-bearing yoga poses can help tone your bones.

By Linda Sparrowe

You can purchase betaine HCl at your local health food store if you need it. Trace minerals enhance calcium's ability to increase bone density as well. Women need approximately 2 mgs of copper, 3 mgs of manganese, and 12 mgs of zinc every day. Nuts, berries, tofu, and tomatoes give you enough manganese and copper; seafood and peas are good sources of zinc.

Beware other calcium robbers. Too much salt can leach calcium from the bones, just like animal protein can. Watch out for hidden salt in processed foods, soft drinks, and canned goods. Phosphates in carbonated soft drinks can also steal from your body's calcium supply; so can caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine. Some researchers warn that consuming more than three or four cups of caffeinated coffee a day can increase your risk factor by 80 percent. Even moderate alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking can double your risk.

ADDITIONAL SUPPLEMENTATION. Besides taking enough calcium, magnesium, and trace minerals, increasing your vitamin K intake may help bones to be less breakable, according to researchers at Tufts University. If you're not on blood thinning medication, you may want to ask your doctor whether increasing your daily intake of vitamin K makes sense. It's actually pretty easy to get all the vitamin K you need from the food you eat. Just eating one-half cup of collard greens, for example, can give you over 400 mcgs of vitamin K; spinach yields 360 mcgs, and broccoli packs 113 mcgs into a half cup. Essential fatty acids, vitamins B6 and C, and folic acid also contribute to good, healthy and strong bone structure.

ADEQUATE ESTROGEN. The body must have an adequate supply of estrogen in order to keep your bones strong and healthy and to minimize bone mass loss. Once you have gone through menopause, your ovaries no longer make the amount of estrogen your body has been used to, so it must look for another supplier. It will turn to the adrenals primarily to get its hormones; body fat and muscles also manufacture (and, to a lesser extent, the ovaries continue to provide) some estrogen. If your adrenals are depleted through stress, poor diet, or illness, they can't do their job. If you have dieted excessively and don't have much body fat, the body won't find the estrogen there, either.

HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY. In a lecture she gave at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, in Lenox, Massachusetts, in May of 1999, Love posed two interesting questions: If, as studies show, a woman will lose significant bone mass twice in her life—during the five to 10 years after menopause and then again in her 70s—but bone fractures, especially in the hips, generally don't occur until a woman is in her 70s and 80s, should she begin taking HRT from perimenopause on, to prevent fractures that most probably will occur (if at all) when she's quite old? Is it possible to wait until a woman reaches 70 or 75 and then give her the smallest amount of estrogen to prevent such breakage?

The most dangerous side effects of hormone therapy—increased risk for breast and endometrium cancer—appear to be the result of long-term usage (more than five years). If we have to go on hormones at 45 or 50 years old to prevent a potential hip fracture 30 years from now, Love warns, we may be setting ourselves up to die of breast cancer or uterine cancer long before we're old enough to break a bone. Unfortunately, there are no clear-cut answers to these questions yet.

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