Contrary to popular belief, building strong bones for a lifetime isn’t JUST about the calcium. Antithetical to decades of celebrity advertisements promoting dairy milk for strong bones, the keys to lifelong bone health do not come oozing out of a swollen cow udder or from toxic, chemical calcium supplements. Building strong bones comes down to three basic things: exercises that build bone density, having the correct intake of healthy nutrients that build strong bones, and eating an alkaline vegan diet to prevent the depletion of calcium and critical minerals in your body. When it comes to lifelong bone health, pretty much everything you’ve been told by the mainstream media is either completely false or intentionally misleading. Let me break this down for you like M.C. Hammer, because the information I’m about to share with you is too legit to quit!
If consumption rates of milk and dairy products are so high, then why do the statistics reflect that bone health today is the complete opposite? If you’ve ever had a family member or friend with bone-health issues, it may have a direct correlation to their dietary choices. Millions of people are now experiencing serious bone fractures and symptoms of osteoporosis, especially later in their lives:
- Osteoporosis is estimated to affect 200 million women worldwide
- Nearly 75 percent of hip, spine, and forearm fractures occur among people 65 years old or older
- By 2050, the worldwide incidence of hip fractures in men is projected to increase by 310 percent, and in women, 240 percent
So wipe off your milk mustache and let’s get ready to rumble!
No Bones about It—You Need to Start Young
The unfortunate reality is that most people don’t start thinking about the health of their bones until midlife or later, by which time it can be too late to do very much to protect against serious bone loss and resulting fractures. Researchers who study bone health state that we should start thinking about long-term bone health starting in childhood and continuing through adolescence, when the body builds most of the bone that must sustain it for the remaining years of life.
Once peak bone mass has been reached, any further gains are relatively minimal, so our younger years are the best time to pay attention to our bone development. By age 20, girls have gained between 90 and 96 percent of their peak bone mass. For boys, peak mass occurs a few years later, in their mid-20s.
About 26 percent of total adult bone mass is accrued in the two years that bone mass increases the most: age 12.5 in girls and 14.1 in boys. The amount of bone added during those 2 years is about the same as what is typically lost in the 30 years between ages 50 and 80. The best available evidence strongly indicates that increasing peak bone mass in childhood by just 10 percent could delay the onset of osteoporosis, especially in postmenopausal women, by about 13 years.
Although nothing can be done about the three factors with the greatest influence on bone mass—gender, age, and genetics—two others factors under our control can make the difference between crippling fractures in midlife and escaping the effects of osteoporosis. Those factors are how much bone-building nutrients we consume and how often we engage in supportive, weight-bearing exercise.
Calcium: Hero or Culprit?
We’re all familiar with the mantra “calcium builds strong bones.” Indeed, calcium does play a role in bone health. But this blockbuster bone-builder doesn’t have a shot at the gold without some key supporting players. There are other, even more vitally important nutrients that you need to consume regularly if you want to keep your bones unbreakable like Bruce Willis. Okay, maybe not unbreakable, but pretty damn strong.
Believe it or not, calcium supplements can do more way more harm than good, depending on the source they are derived from. Almost half the population of the U.S. (almost 70 percent of adult women) uses dietary supplements containing calcium. In general, we absorb less than half of the calcium we ingest. Some researchers warn that calcium supplements are responsible for an increase in calcification. In this process, calcium causes constipation and builds up in the body in soft tissues where it can harden, or calcify. Sites of calcification include artery walls, kidneys, gallbladder, muscles, and breast tissue. For instance, a low-quality form of coral calcium can potentially calcify your body and become highly detrimental in the long run. You want to focus on high-quality, assimilable calcium from food sources (not supplements) and increase your intake of vitamin D and magnesium—which are the REAL stars.
Magnesium: the Master Mineral
Why is magnesium referred to as “master mineral” for our health? Most people think that calcium is THE most important factor in bone health. However, research demonstrates that vitamin D is a major player, and magnesium is absolutely necessary to convert that vitamin D into its active form so that it can turn on the calcium absorption in your body. Magnesium stimulates the hormone calcitonin, which helps to preserve bone structure by drawing calcium out of the blood and soft tissues and back into the bones. This action helps lower the likelihood of osteoporosis, some forms of arthritis, heart attack, and kidney stones. So, if you’re taking lots of calcium and not much vitamin D or magnesium, you are highly susceptible to these conditions.
Healthy amounts of magnesium have been shown to help prevent heart disease and stroke, ward off diabetes, improve elimination of toxins, act as a natural laxative, increase muscle flexibility, and increase blood alkalinity. The highest alkaline, plant-based food sources of natural magnesium are chlorella; spirulina; AFA algae; pumpkin seeds and oil; dark, leafy green vegetables like kale and collard greens; and bitter greens like dandelion. The number-one source, however, is raw cacao. Kapow!
In addition to its magical ability to draw calcium back into your bones, magnesium is a fantastic nutrient for sound sleep, relaxation, and maintaining a balanced mood. However, a true bone-building, box office blockbuster wouldn’t be complete without our crowd-pleasing co-stars, vitamins D and K.
OMG, D and K, FTW!
Vitamin D3 is one of the most useful nutritional tools we have at our disposal for improving overall bone health. This vitamin is unique because, intrinsically, vitamin D3 is in the form of cholecalciferol. However, vitamin D3 acquires hormone-like powers when cholecalciferol is converted into calcitriol by the liver and kidneys. As a hormone, calcitriol controls phosphorus, calcium, bone metabolism, and neuromuscular function. Vitamin D3 is the only vitamin that your body can manufacture from direct sunlight exposure (UVB rays). Yet, with most of us spending too much time indoors and extensively using sunscreens due to concern about skin cancer, we are now a society with millions of individuals deficient in this life-sustaining, bone-building, and immune-modulating vitamin.
Vitamin D3 is actually an oil-soluble steroid hormone that forms when your skin is exposed to UVB radiation from the sun. When UVB rays hit the surface of your skin, your skin converts a cholesterol derivative into usable vitamin D3. It takes up to 48 hours for this form of vitamin D3 to be fully absorbed into your bloodstream and elevate your overall vitamin D levels.
One of the best-known and long-established benefits of vitamin D3 is its ability to improve bone health and the health of the musculoskeletal system. It is well documented that vitamin D3 deficiency causes osteopenia, precipitates and exacerbates osteoporosis, causes a painful bone disease known as osteomalacia, and increases muscle weakness, which increases the risk of falls and fractures. Vitamin D3 insufficiency may alter the regulatory mechanisms of parathyroid hormone (PTH) and cause a secondary hyperparathyroidism that increases the risk of osteoporosis and fractures.
Vitamin D3 is generally found in dairy products and is manufactured in the body from healthy sun exposure. However, dairy products are much too acidic to be considered healthy for the human body and can strip your bones of calcium due to their acidic nature. You can easily get a healthy daily dose of vitamin D3 by lying out in the sunshine, allowing the sun’s rays to make contact with your naked skin. Or, if you want to get a little exercise at the same time, take a 15-to-30-minute walk with your skin exposed. I’m not saying totally naked here, but liberally expose your arms and legs to the sun. If you live in a climate where sunshine is not regularly abundant, you can use a natural, plant-based, transdermal vitamin D cream or take a high-quality oral supplement.
Vitamin K may very well be “the next vitamin D” as research uncovers a growing number of benefits the nutrient offers. However, most people are far too deficient in vitamin K to reap its maximum benefits. Vitamin K comes in two forms: vitamin K1 and vitamin K2. Among the many types of vitamin K2, MK-7 is a newer agent with more practical applications because it stays in your body longer. In 2008, a German research group discovered that vitamin K2 provides substantial protection from prostate cancer, which is one of the leading causes of cancer death among men in the United States. Preliminary findings also suggest that vitamin K can help protect you from brain disease. Vitamin K is also seen to contribute to bone health. To raise your vitamin K1 levels, you should eat more organic, green, leafy vegetables. It is also important to balance your vitamin D and calcium levels when taking vitamin K, as these three nutrients work together.
Interestingly, the highest known source of highly assimilable vitamin K2 comes from a somewhat obscure traditional Japanese food called natto. Natto is made from ultra-fermented soybeans that are cultured with a unique spore that creates two benefits: high amounts of bone-building vitamin K2 and the potent enzyme nattokinase, which has been shown in research studies to decrease the amount of arterial plaque in the heart, thereby staving off some danger of atherosclerosis. Natto is definitely a unique, acquired taste; the experience is somewhere between really potent fermented cheese and soft, sticky tempeh. Personally, I’m hooked on natto and serve it with green onions, sliced avocado, and barbeque sauce on toast for a nutritious flavor explosion!
Eat Alkaline and You’ll Be Fine
When your body is in homeostasis, it is in a state of optimal balance. All systems are working effortlessly and in a state of harmonic cooperation to keep your body functioning properly. Examples of homeostasis include the regulation of temperature and the balance between acidity and alkalinity (pH). It is a process that maintains the stability of the human body’s internal environment in response to changes in external conditions.
When your body becomes too acidic from stress, negative emotions, or eating too many acidic foods, you are in a state of imbalance and potential disease. In particular, when your blood becomes too acidic, you could die in a matter of minutes unless an alkaline mineral buffers the acidic pH of your blood. So, who gets the call from the body to come in as the cavalry? It’s calcium to the rescue!
Whew—isn’t it nice to know that our bodies have such a sophisticated system of balance to prevent us from a gruesome and untimely death? Indeed—except for the fact that the body pulls the calcium from its most abundant source: your bones. So, you see, if you eat too many highly acidic foods like meat, cheese, milk, eggs, processed flours, white sugar, refined vinegars, and artificial preservatives, your body quickly becomes acidic and therefore a breeding ground for potential disease and loss of bone density.
This is precisely why drinking animal milk is such a nutritional contradiction. Yes, animal milks do contain calcium. However, because your body has to buffer the increased acidity by leaching alkaline calcium from your bones, there is never, ever a net gain in your calcium levels. In fact, consuming acidic foods for long periods of time always results in a net calcium loss. That’s why the developed nations that consume the most dairy have the highest incidence of osteoporosis and bone fractures. For example, in the United States alone, osteoporosis and low bone mass are a major public health threat for more than 52 million women and men over the age of 50 and, if current trends continue, the figure could climb to more than 61 million people by 2020.
