Bad to the Bone 🦴

Good morning 🦴 This is Andrew's Apples, the health newsletter that spells the hard truth. You know what else is hard? Bones. My friend Caitlan, who works professionally as a medical writer, is here to talk bones. Listen up or you'll end up weak, brittle, and alone. Enjoy! 

We shape our diet to prevent obe­sity, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease, but how often do we consider our calcium reserves? Years in advance, we try to prevent aging of the skin and receding of the hair, but our bones—out of sight, out of mind—don’t always get the attention they deserve. Here are a few apples to bone up on your health. 

1. 🦴 A bone to pick.  Literally translated from Greek, osteoporosis means “bone poverty.” As our population ages, so does the incidence of osteoporosis and its precursor osteopenia, with post-menopausal women comprising the majority of affected patients. The primary and secondary risk factors for bone loss are well under­stood: poor nutrition, a petit frame, Celiac disease or chronic use of certain medications (i.e. steroids for asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, and inflammatory bowel disease, or high doses of thyroid hormones) can all lead to lower bone density. And like many of the most charming medical foibles, the condition is mostly genetic. Generational shifts, like kids trading sunshine for screentime, and a growing antipathy towards dairy products, might mean brittle bones ahead. But even though low bone density typically affects older people, the time to bulk up our skeletal strength is now.

2. 🕰️ Dirty 30.  We think of bones as static, unchanging, but they’re amazingly metabolically active. They even have a lifecycle, categorized by two distinct timelines. First is childhood through adolescence, during the growth period. It’s easy to be a kid. Every day’s a Summer Friday, and the skeleton is busy building itself. (Uncle Andrew would offer a nostalgic nod to those tiny, house-shaped milk cartons in the cafeteria right about now.) The second timeline begins after we’re done growing, when the skeleton starts remodeling—break­ing down old bone and rebuilding itself, as opposed to building from scratch. Around the big 3-0, humans achieve peak bone mass. We want our bones as strong as possible at their peak—a skeletal endowment—because after our mid-thirties, bone loss starts outpacing bone buildup, and density is lost.

3. 🦹‍♂️ Calcium robbers.  Even if you’ve already thirty and flirty and thriving, we can all make modest improvements in our bone health. What to skip? Smoking, salty foods, and soda. The AHA discourages consuming more than 2,300 mg of sodium per day. (Be mindful of The Salty Six.) Sodium is a known calcium robber: when we have a high acid load, the body begins to steal base loads from the bone. (The same thing occurs during pregnancy; if a pregnant person is low on calcium, the body sees the bones as a reserve of nutrients for the fetus.) Oh, and a doc at the Hospital for Special Surgery once told me that diet soda is like “death for bones.”

4. 🌞 Pro-bone behavior. It’s never too early or too late for bone loss prevention. Try to hit about 1,000 mg of calci­um a day, half through diet and half through a multi-vite. Incorporate a separate Vitamin D supplement. Habituate yourself with the sun. (If you put on sunscreen when you go out­side, then stay out for twenty min­utes, you’ve probably gotten enough D by the time the SPF kicks in.) Regular exercise, especially of the weight-bearing variety, allows the muscle to pull against bone and stimulate growth. All this pro-bone behavior is good for the brain and the heart, too, so why not make your skeleton the backbone of your health?

How about them Bones? Hit her with any comments or questions. Love hearing from you folks. 

Your friends, 

Caitlan🦴 (& Andrew🍎)

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