Bone Health - What Do I Need to Know?

We tend to take our bones for granted. At least, until we break one or get a diagnosis of osteoporosis. 

So, why is it that some women have great bones and others experience greater density loss and fracture risk?

Remember, bones are alive, active tissue. They are constantly being broken down and replaced with new. How we eat and live impacts that process and the health of our bones.

What increases the rate of bone breakdown?

Inflammation is #1. Long-term inflammation causes the bone to be broken down faster than new bone can be built. 

Signs of long-term inflammation include fatigue, poor digestion, joint pain, body pain, depression, anxiety, abdominal or chest pain, and fever.

You can decrease inflammation by eating a wide variety of vegetables every day for their powerful anti-oxidant (anti-inflammatory) effect. Think of antioxidants quenching the fire of inflammation. The next step is reducing (mostly eliminating) inflammatory foods like sugar, processed foods, refined oils, and flour products.

How to promote healthy, strong bones?

1. Weight bearing activity stresses bones in a good way so they build stronger. Weight lifting, walking, biking, running, dancing, resistance exercises such as squats. Exercise also builds muscle to better support joints and bones. Coordination and balance increase too.

2. Eating good food like dark green leafies, eggs, fish, meat, nuts/seeds; while minimizing foods that are high calorie but low in nutrients, like bread and sweets since these don’t provide needed nutrients and they create inflammation.

3. Nutrients are needed for bones to be strong. Protein is needed for bone flexibility. We need more protein as we get older, when many of us aren’t eating enough or not digesting it well. Minerals like calcium and magnesium are needed for strength. But before you jump to grab that calcium supplement, know that Vitamin D, Vitamin K2 and magnesium are at least as important as calcium for retaining bone density.

Am I getting enough calcium? Should I take supplements, drink more milk?

Calcium is important but research has found little to no benefit from taking calcium or from drinking milk. 

Calcium supplements have been associated w colon polyps, kidney stones and dangerous calcium buildup in blood vessels.

In the Nurses’ Health Study, women who drank milk twice a day were as likely to have a bone fracture as women who drank it only once a week.

So, if not calcium supplements or milk, what do I do?

If you are eating even a reasonably healthy diet then you are very likely getting enough calcium. But several other nutrients determine whether you absorb and use that calcium where it matters.

Nutrients needed to absorb and use calcium appropriately.

• Vitamin D
• Vitamin K2
• Magnesium

Vitamin D is necessary to absorb calcium from the gut. Vitamin D is in ‘good’ egg yolks and fatty fish. During warmer months Vitamin D is made when unprotected skin is exposed to sunlight. Try exposing skin to tolerance, then using sunscreen only for longer exposures.

If you don’t eat egg yolks and fatty fish several times a week, and don’t have year-round sun exposure you might consult a knowledgeable person about supplementation. You want to be careful to get enough Vitamin D, but not too much.

Vitamin K2 is critical to make sure calcium goes to bones and teeth, and NOT to your kidneys, heart or blood vessels. 

Calcium is your body’s bandaid or patch system. Inner linings of blood vessels that are damaged by too much sugar creating inflammation get patched w calcium and harden, leading to high blood pressure.

K2 is in beef and goose liver, natto, dark meat chicken, hard cheeses like Gouda, Pecorino Romano, Gruyere, also Jarlsberg cheese, and in lesser amounts in soft cheeses, eggs, grass-fed butter, sour cream, ground beef and cured ham. Some K2 is also made by beneficial bacteria in a healthy gut.

The daily K2 recommendation for women is 90mcg which is difficult to get from food if not eating the top few foods in this list quite regularly. Supplementation is suggested if not.

Since magnesium and calcium work together, simply restoring sufficient magnesium alone may correct calcium.

Calcium and magnesium are minerals ingested in our food. Sufficient HCL, hydrochloric stomach acid, is needed to isolate minerals in the stomach so they can be absorbed in the gut. Of course, a healthy gut lining is necessary to absorb nutrients. An unhealthy gut microbiome, often due to poor upstream digestion allowing undigested food to create inflammation, can result in a gut lining ill-prepared to absorb nutrients.

Remember, anything that purposefully decreases acidity in the stomach, like PPI’s or frequent antacid use, will inhibit mineral absorption. What appears to be too much acid in the stomach is often actually due to too little acidity, so further reducing acidity with medications can put your mineral and nutrient sufficiency in jeopardy.

Also, gluten can be a cause of osteoporosis. If you have celiac for sure, but even low-grade non-celiac gluten sensitivity can cause leaky gut and impair gut health enough to limit absorption.

What about hormones and bone health?

Both estrogen and progesterone play important roles in bone health. When we spend much of our time in ‘fight or flight’ or sympathetic nervous system mode, our hormones can be essentially put on hold while the body focuses on survival. This causes our overall health and bones to suffer.

Stuck in Sympathetic Nervous System Mode (Fight or Flight)? – 3 Common Causes

1. Current mental/emotional stress – busy life, relationship strife, financial strain, etc.
2. Past mental/emotional stress – unprocessed grief, shame, guilt, grudge, etc.
3. Unaddressed physical imbalance – dysbiosis, leaky gut, longterm low grade infection, food sensitivities, autoimmune disease, etc.

Our body can be in ‘fight or flight’ much of the time without our realizing it. Current mental/emotional stress can cause this, but what many don’t realize is that carrying mental/emotional stress from the past can be a huge stress even if life is currently going well. Also, physical imbalances anywhere in the body can keep us in ‘fight or flight’ as well.

When the Parasympathetic nervous system mode, ‘rest and digest’, ‘calm and connect’, is our default mode, our bodies can have healthy hormone and digestive function. We can heal and rebuild, including bone. All 3 of the above causes of being stuck in ‘fight or flight’ need to be addressed fully.

You can increase your bone density and prevent further bone loss with a comprehensive functional medicine approach. And as a side effect, you’ll get healthier all the way around!