I recently attended a lecture about osteoporosis and was shocked to hear some of the stats. For example, the US, which has one of the highest consumption of dairy, also has high osteoporosis rates. How is that so, you may ask? This lecture described how an acidic diet can leach the calcium out of your bones. Dairy is acidic so therefore the more dairy you drink the more acidic your body becomes and the harder it is for your body to achieve an optimal ph balance. A healthy person has a blood ph level of 7.4. So to help prevent osteoporosis it is recommended to eat more alkaline foods.
Here is a website I found that listing out alkaline and acidic foods: http://www.energiseforlife.com/list_of_alkaline_foods.php.
This lecture also discussed the importance of resistance exercise in preventing osteoporosis. Resistance exercise causes the bones to bend, for example, when you are doing a squat and your bones are bending a bit. What happens is osteoblasts (cells responsible for building bone) migrate to the stress area and lay down more bone so you are building up your bone. Your body also contains something called osteoclasts and these cells reabsorb bone. The main point is that resistance exercise is very important in controlling osteoporosis.
So how do you find out if you are at risk for osteoporosis? There are a variety of tests such as a DEXA scan which scans your entire body and can tell your bone density. The best test this lecture talked about was getting a bone resorption test which tells your urine for bone loss. This test will tell you how fast you are losing bone.
The lecture was only one hour, but it was filled with lots of interesting stats and great information. Please take the time to learn about osteoporosis here is a link www.iofbonehealth.org.
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