Whenever someone talks about getting any part of their body healthy, it almost always seems like healthy eating and exercise comes up. Well, that’s because it’s critical for all-around wellness, but especially when it comes to your bones, because a lack of mobility is a major factor in developing other ailments.
What Eating Healthy Means For Bones
Eating healthy is complicated, often because eating healthy means different things to different organs, muscular, and skeletal systems. However, there is plenty of overlap. Taking some of this information to heart should help you improve your bone health and density and contribute to helping other systems as well.
Eat Lots of Vegetables — Even if they didn’t know why they were saying it, all those comments about eating your vegetables in order to grow up big and strong are true. Many vegetables contain vitamin C, which stimulates the production of bone-forming cells and has antioxidant properties that some studies suggest play a role in protecting bone cells.
While vitamin C may help protect bones, building them up in the first place is vital. Calcium and other minerals directly contribute to bone density — the measure of the amount of calcium and other minerals in your bones. A low count here is one of the things that helps determine osteoporosis — a common and serious orthopedic condition.
Finally, even before you’re able to build up your bones, you need to have the tools to absorb calcium. This means loading up on enough vitamins D and K. Vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium, so while you might have more than enough calcium, it could be going to waste in addressing your bone density if you’re not getting enough vitamin D. Vitamin K serves a similar function, enabling the process of bone formation because of the way it interacts with certain proteins.
This is just the beginning of eating right for your bone health, but it is a start!
The Benefits of Exercise on Your Bones
Exercise and orthopedic health have a complicated relationship. On the one hand, the worse your orthopedic health gets, the harder it will be to perform certain activities, because of both functionality and the pain you’ll be in. On the other hand, if you’re not exercising enough, then you’re putting your orthopedic health at risk. Exercise and resistance training is paramount to healthy bones.