Keeping your bones strong and healthy is essential for your body throughout your life, especially when you grow older and your bones begin to weaken. From birth until around age thirty, our bones are growing. They’re developing their mass through the help of minerals and nutrients like calcium. When we hit thirty, our bone density peaks, and we will rely on that level of bone mass we built ourselves for the rest of our lives.
So, if we use steps in healthy eating and exercise to boost our bone mass, we’ll be able to stay active and strong for most of the rest of our lives. However, if we don’t develop a good enough bone mass in our youth, our bones will be more fragile and susceptible to breaks and bone loss later in life. Having a low bone mass will make your bones break easier, and make you weaker as you age.
Perhaps you are past your bone growth stage and have already struggled with bone issues in your life. If you’ve dealt with breakage,fracture, or deterioration, doctors have likely recommended finding ways to strengthen your bones. Or, maybe you’re still young and developing bone mass.
Regardless of whether you’ve already struggled with bone issues or if your healthcare provider has encouraged you to strengthen your bones more, it’s always a good idea to allow your bones to reach their fullest potential, as it will aid you for the rest of your life. Follow these tips for improving bone health by developing strong, firm bones and increasing their mass.
Eat Your Vitamins!
All vitamins and minerals are essential to include in your diet to promote a healthy body– however, there are vitamins and minerals specific to bone health that you’ll want to add to your meals to get that bone mass to its full capacity. Bone density is calculated by the number of minerals and calcium that are present in your bones, so you’ll want to pack them into your diet!
Vitamin C is the first of these. When Vitamin C enters your body, it is a stimulant that causes bone cell production to increase, increasing your bone density. On top of this, Vitamin C is rich in antioxidants, which protect your bone cells from any damage. Vitamin C can be found most effciently in green and yellow vegetables, but also in fruit such as oranges.
Next is Vitamin D. This Vitamin aids in absorbing Calcium. This is beneficial because it will ensure that the Calcium you are putting in the effort to include in your diet is getting through and doing what you want it to do– building bone mass! Calcium is the mineral that makes up most of your bones, so you’ll want to include as much of it into your diet as possible! Vitamin D can be derived from cheese, fatty fish, and getting plenty of sunlight.
The final vitamin is Vitamin K2, which is similar in effect to Vitamin D in helping your bones absorb the nutrients you put into your body. Vitamin K2 aids a bone formation protein called osteocalcin, helping it ensure that the minerals consumed are bound to the bone and that no
calcium is lost! Vitamin K2 is harder to find in large quantities in specific foods, but there are some in the liver, meat, eggs, soybean products, cheese, and sauerkraut.
Supplements of the Future: Peptides
A bone health hero that could be on the rise is a healing peptide called Ipamorelin! Peptides are compounds made of groups of amino acids that are found naturally in the human body. By consuming peptides, bodily processes can be accelerated by the addition of the natural stimulants used in the production of a specific effect. In this case, we’d want a peptide that would accelerate the natural process of bone density development, and through animal research, Ipamorelin is becoming a great potential solution.
Research conducted by scientists on rat test subjects has found Ipamorelin to have a positive effect on bone density growth. Ipamorelin has been found to systematically increase mineral bone density, meaning that it not only helps new bone mass to develop but also strengthens the already existing mass. When given to rats, Ipamorelin increased their bone growth and density fourfold! It also was found to completely stop any bone loss the rats may have experienced!
Further research will have to be conducted in order to confirm the safety of Ipamorelin when given to humans, but as of now, it is a promising solution. Keep an eye out for Ipamorelin as you continue on your journey to increase your bone health, because it may be just the solution you need!
