The bare bones about calcium intake

• Last Updated: November 15. 2009 4:12PM UAE / November 15. 2009 12:12PM GMT

Studies have shown that a high consumption of fruit and vegetables is better for bone health than dairy consumption. Courtesy BSIP

Did you know you can only improve bone density until around age 30? From that point forward, it is about minimising risk rather than building bone.

It is not exactly the most exciting thing to think about. At the age of 30 there are other worries: mortgages, fertility, children or the perpetual struggle to lose weight, which ironically is one of the factors that can lead to the development of osteoporosis.

My gran, who recently passed away at the age of 95, frequently said that all she would need to regain her get-up-and-go was a new skeleton.

Opinions on how to treat osteoporosis, or osteopenia, are, dare I say it, fractured. In the US, annual sales of osteoporosis drugs have doubled since 2003 to about $8.3 billion (Dh30.4bn), according to Kalorama Information, a provider of market research on medicine. It’s a big problem, and with an ageing population, getting bigger by the year.

Many people know that calcium is vital for bones and therefore consume milk to get their daily quota. Yet the incidences of osteoporosis are lower in countries where populations consume fewer dairy products.

A National Institutes of Health study at the University of California, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that “women who ate most of their protein from animal sources had three times the rate of bone loss and 3.7 times the rate of hip fractures as women who ate most of their protein from vegetable sources”. The study’s conclusion: “An increase in vegetable protein intake and a decrease in animal protein intake may decrease bone loss and the risk of hip fracture.”

After reviewing studies on the link between protein intake and urinary calcium loss, the dairy industry researcher Dr Robert P Heaney found that as consumption of protein increases, so does the amount of calcium lost in the urine. “This effect has been documented in several different study designs for more than 70 years,” he says in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. “The net effect is such that, if protein intake is doubled without changing intake of other nutrients, urinary calcium content increases by about 50 per cent.”

Another study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looked at all aspects of diet and found that high consumption of fruit and vegetables positively affected bone health and that dairy consumption did not. Such findings do not surprise nutritional researchers: the calcium absorption rate from milk is approximately 30 per cent, while figures for broccoli, Brussels sprouts, mustard greens, turnip greens, kale and other green leafy vegetables ranges from 40 to 64 per cent.

Excessive protein, or having more than two servings of meat a day, combined with a low intake of fruit and vegetables can adversely affect calcium balance as well as blood sugar. The research supports what many nutritionists and public health officials have preached for some time, namely the importance of a balanced diet with a high proportion of fruit and vegetables, especially legumes, and a lower proportion of meat and dairy.

The last skeleton-preserving factor is exercise, especially weight training. Integrated medicine experts such as Dr Dirgot Rakel at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital support what your personal trainer said all along: exercise is essential but not all workouts are created equal when it comes to building bone mass. Weight-bearing exercises, jumping, squats and running are good for bones.

Properly overseen by a coach or personal trainer, weight-bearing exercise is especially important as we get older for keeping bone density from degrading and quite literally keeping the skeleton together.

Amanda Hamilton’s detox programme can be seen on The Spa of Embarrassing Illnesses on BBC Lifestyle.