Strong Bones Are Not Just for Seniors: Why Bone Health is Important at Every Age

When you hear the word "Osteoporosis,” you immediately think "senior citizen” or "elderly patient” right? You might even take that further and think "elderly woman” specifically because you’re so used to hearing about it in relation to women’s health issues, rather than men’s.

The truth is, osteoporosis is not just a disease of the elderly, nor is bone health something that suddenly becomes important once you are a senior citizen, or if you’re a woman, once you hit menopause.

Bone strength and health are lifelong concerns that should start early, and that should be addressed by forming good habits in childhood - habits you, or your children and grandchildren, may not know are connected to bone health at all.

We at Slidell Memorial Hospital are committed to helping you build and maintain healthy bones to last a lifetime, just as we are committed to delivering the very best orthopedic diagnosis and treatments if and when you need it.

To that end, we have created a there-part series about bone health to help you better understand the importance of bone health, and to give you tips you can use to build and maintain it at every age.

Part 1: Bone Health Tips for Kids Birth to Puberty:

Strong healthy bones start in childhood, yet most people don’t start thinking about their bones at all, much less how to maintain healthy ones until midlife or later. The problem with that is, by that time it can be too late to do very much to protect against serious bone loss and resulting fractures.

As the New York Times reports:

"Lifelong studies have not been done in people, but the best available evidence strongly indicates that increasing peak bone mass in childhood by just 10 percent could delay osteoporosis, especially in postmenopausal women, by about 13 years.

Peak bone mass is reached in childhood too, typically around 12.5 for girls and 14.5 for boys, so the habits formed younger than that age can matter the most. In fact, researchers have found once peak bone mass has been reached, gains after that are minimal at best.

To understand why bone mass is so important you first have to understand how your skeleton works, because it does "work,” it’s not just there, holding you upright or enabling you to move around. Your skeleton is your body’s way of storing calcium – a mineral your body needs in order to function properly. Calcium is also an essential building block of bone tissue itself.

To maintain healthy bones, kids must eat healthy diet and maintain a healthy weight.

If you don’t get enough calcium from the foods you eat, your body will remove it from the "storage” in your bones, and if that happens often throughout your life, your bones will grow weaker and weaker over time.

Therefore, it is vital that children develop health-eating habits when they are young to ensure they have high enough supplies of calcium, not only to fuel rapid skeletal growth, but also to fuel rapidly developing tissues in every other system of their bodies. It’s simple: if they are deficient, even their young bodies will rob their growing bones of calcium leaving them weaker and more prone to fracture or injury as a result.

Eating a healthy diet in childhood may be one of the most important factors contributing to lifelong bone health, but it’s not the only one. Maintaining healthy weight is crucial too. You may know most of the other risks associated with obesity, but you may not realize brittle bones prone to joint damage and osteoporosis, are on that list too.

For starters, it is nearly impossible for a growing child to become obese eating a properly balanced nutritious diet. So chances are, if a child is obese, that first healthy bone habit hasn’t been formed, and parents or caregivers need to backtrack and see what they can do to improve it.

Second, obese children tend to consume lots of processed foods and sugary drinks high in phosphate. There are three key problems with consuming soda in general, but during these crucial bone-growth years especially:

· Soda contains high levels of phosphate. Consuming more phosphate than calcium can have a deleterious effect on bone health.

· Soft drinks are generally devoid of calcium and other healthful nutrients, yet they are actively marketed to young age groups, and children are encouraged to drink more soda than milk as a result.

· Milk is a good source of calcium and protein, and also provides vitamin D, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and other micronutrients, but there is an inverse pattern between soft drink consumption and milk consumption – when one goes up, the other goes down.

It may seem obvious that babies and very young children (under the age of 5) should drink milk as their primary beverage, but it’s not uncommon for parents to think it’s not important once they are of school age, and nothing could be further from the truth.

Milk and dairy products are an excellent source of calcium and vitamin D, two things vital to bone health. That’s why most pediatricians still recommend parents provide either milk or water as the primary beverages, and that they limit soft drink consumption to a minimum. For babies, especially nursing babies, vitamin D drops are recommended to ensure they get the minimum daily requirement.

For children who don’t like milk, or are lactose intolerant or allergic, there are many lactose free varieties fortified with calcium, and many other non-dairy sources.

Some that might surprise you are dark green vegetables like spinach and kale, as well as nuts like almonds. In fact, you might try almond milk, just look for unsweetened varieties to avoid adding sugar to their diet. Beans like black-eyed peas are another good source, as are dried figs.

While it’s always best to get calcium and vitamin D from foods directly, another option is to look for "calcium-fortified” foods your child will like and eat, but once again, be wary of those also containing lots of sugar or sodium as those can cancel out the benefits of the calcium in terms of bone health.

Finally, consider supplements like a daily multi-vitamin with calcium, just consult with your pediatrician to ensure you are selecting the right one. Not all calcium supplements are created equal, and some sources are more bioavailable, or readily absorbed than others. Plant-based sources tend to be best in this regard.

Specific guidelines for Calcium and Vitamin D consumption can be found here.

The right choice of exercise can be the difference between bone strength or weakness.

Another thing to avoid in childhood is the sedentary, lifestyle because it not only contributes to obesity, it compromises bone strength as well. Staying active, either through some organized sport or fitness routine, or just getting outside to play and run around, helps kids burn calories and maintain healthy weight.

It also keeps them busy, preventing bad habits like eating out of sheer boredom, or mindless eating while watching TV or playing video games (both sedentary activities that also encourage between-meal snacking, especially with the constant barrage of junk food ads aimed at this age group).

Where bone health specifically is concerned, not all forms of "exercise” are created equal. Active is better than sedentary, but for optimal health, there are some forms of exercise that are actually potentially harmful in younger kids, and need to be balanced with a variety of bone-building activities.

To understand more about how and why exercise matters so much, we refer you again to the same recent New York Times report:

"You might think that any kind of exercise is good for bones, and the more active a child is, the better. That is largely, but not always, true. On average, as with adults, active children have higher bone mineral density and reduced risk of fractures compared with their inactive counterparts, Dr. Kirk L. Scofield noted last year in Current Sports Medicine Reports. But some types of activities are better than others.

"Studies have found that the bone mineral density of young endurance runners is consistently lower than that of sprinters, gymnasts or ball sports athletes. In fact, those engaged in endurance and non-weight-bearing activities sometimes have weaker bones and a greater risk of fractures, both while actively competing and later in life, than their inactive peers.

"Repetitive stress can tear down bone and is not the best for increasing bone strength,” Dr. Scofield said in an interview. "It’s not that running, walking, cycling or swimming are bad. They’re just not as good for bone strength as other types of athletic activities.”

Bones, he said, seem to respond best to a combination of stress, rest and variety, which suggests that youngsters engaged in endurance activities should also do cross-training to maximize bone strength.”

When it comes to helping your child select a form of exercise and sport, be sure to keep bone mass and bone strength in mind, and encourage balance as much as you can.

Conclusion

Healthy habits, begun in childhood, are crucial to helping children build optimal bone mass that will protect them for a lifetime. Parents and caregivers should take advantage of this time period in their children’s lives by using the control they have over meal planning and food purchases to help them make good choices.

They should also encourage them to be as active as possible, and should set a good example by getting active and eating well themselves. The evidence is clear: doing these things will pay off in puberty, as well as in later life.

Check back soon for Part 2 where we will talk about maintaining bone health in the teenage years.