Tips for Healthy Bones
Growing older can lead to your bones decreasing in strength and an increase of fractures and falls. Here are some ways to help you keep your bones strong and healthy!
Exercise:
Building you your muscle strength can help support your bones – just a small increase of exercise could help reduce joint pain! Why don’t you start with moderate exercise? Anything from walking to tennis! Dancing is an excellent way of building up strength, it’s fun, and you can bring along friends.
Improving muscle strength can also be as simple as carrying your weekly shop; park a little further away from the supermarket and carry your groceries to your car. Yoga and lifting weights are also great ways to build up your strength! For stiffness, yoga and Tai Chi can help with flexibility and stretching out and are quite low-intensity sports.
Find out more exercises on the NHS website.
Diet:
Changing your diet can also help to get healthier bones! Increasing your intake of calcium and vitamin D increases the strength of your bones. Calcium helps your muscles, nerves and cells work, and lack of calcium can lead to weaker bones which can increase the likelihood of falls and arthritis. Vitamin D helps your body absorb the calcium needed and helps to keep your bones strong and healthy.
As you age, your body can find it harder to absorb vitamin D and so you can take supplements if needed to help your intake.
Foods such as milk, other dairy products, orange juice that is fortified (usually labelled from concentrate) as this contains the highest levels of calcium and vitamin D; and leafy greens will factor towards an increase in vitamin D and calcium.
Lifestyle:
Always check eyesight and hearing as you get older; these can help factor into you falling and fracturing bones as they start to deteriorate. Foot pains can also affect mobility and the way you walk, which can lead to falls and fractures too. Also, double-check with your GP that any medication you are on isn’t going to make you dizzy!
Try and cut out a high intake of caffeine and alcohol; they can affect bone strength and calcium intake. Smoking can also affect your bones, so cutting this out could help strengthen your muscles and bones!
We also have some programmes to help you quit smoking, prevent falls and more!