Building Stronger Bones for Life!

Fight Osteoporosis! It's never to late to start protecting and repairing your bones. Your body constantly builds up and breaks down bone tissue, a cycle designed to supply bones with strong, young cells. After you reach your peak lifetime bone mass, around the age of 30, your body begins to break down bone cells faster than it can make new ones-a process that accelerates in your 40's. A simple plan gives you the power to fend off this scary disease, starting right now.

1. Choose an exercise program with your bones in mind.

• You need two types of exercises
  
• Weight-bearing-(intense walking program)
  
• Muscle strengthening/Resistance(weight lifting with free weights or machines, push-ups, pull-ups and resistance bands.

2. Eat for your bones, starting with calcium

• Calcium is the mineral that makes bones strong
  Women under 50 need at least 1000 milligrams of calcium per day
  Try to get as much calcium as possible from food( Dairy, broccoli, kale, tofu)

3. Take Supplements Strategically

• Calcium carbonate is the cheapest,most widely used supplement.
  
• Vitamin D- either D2 or D3 helps the body take in calcium and deposit it in your bones
  
• Vitamins B6 and B12 People deficient in these vitamins have a greater risk of broken bones
  

4. When you reach Menopause, insist on a Bone Scan

Government guildlines reccomend that healthy women wait until they're 65 before getting a bone scan( but 60 if you're at high risk for osteoporosis). But women start losing the largest percentage of bone more than a decade earlier, when their estrogen level drops and menstruation ends.

Tiffany Casey,

Personal Trainer and Manager of The Ice House