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Bone health: Tips to keep your bones healthy
Protecting your bone health is easier than you think. Understand how diet, physical activity and other lifestyle factors can affect your bone mass.
By Mayo Clinic staffBones play many roles in the body — providing structure, protecting organs, anchoring muscles and storing calcium. While it's particularly important to take steps to build strong and healthy bones during childhood and adolescence, you can take steps during adulthood to protect bone health, too.
Why is bone health important?
Your bones are continuously changing — new bone is made and old bone is broken down. When you're young, your body makes new bone faster than it breaks down old bone and your bone mass increases. Most people reach their peak bone mass around age 30. After that, bone remodeling continues, but you lose slightly more than you gain. How likely you are to develop osteoporosis — a condition that causes bones to become weak and brittle — depends on how much bone mass you attain by the time you reach age 30 and how rapidly you lose it later. The higher your peak bone mass, the more bone you have "in the bank" and the less likely you are to develop osteoporosis as you age.
Next page(1 of 2)
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- Bone health. National Institutes of Health. http://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/bone_health.cfm. Accessed April 1, 2010.
- Exercise for your bone health. National Institutes of Health. http://www.niams.nih.gov/health_info/bone/Bone_Health/Exercise/bone_exercise.pdf. Accessed April 1, 2010.
- Osteoporosis overview. National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. http://www.niams.nih.gov/Health_Info/Bone/Osteoporosis/overview.pdf. Accessed Oct. 26, 2009.
- Invest in your bones: Beat the break. International Osteoporosis Foundation. http://www.iofbonehealth.org/download/osteofound/filemanager/publications/pdf/beat-the-break-english.pdf. Accessed Oct. 26, 2009.
- Dietary reference intakes for calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, vitamin D, and fluoride. Institute of Medicine. http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5776. Accessed Oct. 26, 2009.
- Diem SJ, et al. Use of antidepressants and rates of hip bone loss in older women: The study of osteoporotic fractures. Archives of Internal Medicine. 2007;167:1240.
- Haney EM, et al. Association of low bone mineral density with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor use by older men. Archives of Internal Medicine. 2007;167:1246.
- Osteoporosis. American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=a00232. Accessed Oct. 26, 2009.
- Nippoldt TB (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Aug. 30, 2010.
- Osteoporosis. American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. http://www.acog.org/publications/patient_education/bp048.cfm. Accessed Aug. 31, 2010.
- USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 22. U.S. Department of Agriculture. http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/. Accessed Sept. 10, 2010.
- Dietary reference intakes for calcium and vitamin D. Institute of Medicine. http://www.iom.edu/vitamind. Accessed Nov. 30, 2010.
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