I've recently become fascinated by the connection between nutrition and bone health. I have my friend, Jessica Yeaton, DPT who is a fellow "bonehead" to thank for this recent obsession on all things bone health. I'm not sure I've met anyone more passionate about the skeletal system. She's been sending me bones and tendons podcasts for the past several months and I'm here for it.
Bones are incredible. It's also incredible how much bone health correlates with nutrition, or rather, adequate nutrition. The more we take care of our nutrition, the more we take care of our bones.
Approximately 10 million Americans over the age of 50 have osteoporosis and another 34 million have low bone mass. After the age of 50, a woman's risk of dying from a hip fracture is equal to her lifetime risk of dying from breast cancer.
Healthy nutritional habits combined with exercise are imperative for maintaining bone health.
Bones 101: Bone Function, Structure, and More
Before we dive into how to use nutrition to support your bone health, we need to talk about what bone is and how its function, structure, and more interacts with the rest of our body and systems.
Bone Structure
Bone is a living tissue. It's easy to overlook this fact and think of bone as somewhat inert. Maybe this is because bone is often depicted as a skeleton, which are often correlated with something that appears dead. However, bone is heavily vascularized, meaning it receives great blood and nutrient supply.
The most common types of bones include cortical/compact and trabecular/spongey bone. Cortical/compact bone is what forms the "shaft" and the exterior of long bones such as the femur and humerus. Trabecular/spongey bone is a rather porous type of bone that is composed of both hard and soft tissue components which can be found in the epiphyses (rounded portion at the ends of bones) and metaphyses (wide portion that contains the growth plate during childhood) of long bones and in the vertebral bodies. Figure 1 below provides a visual of general bone anatomy.
The main differences between the two bone types are their level of vascularization. Cortical bone is a dense, low-porosity and less metabolically active tissue. Trabecular bone is a honey-comb like network with a larger remodeling area and higher turnover rate.
Figure 1: General Bone Anatomy
And then there's bone marrow. Bone marrow is what's producing our white and red blood cells. The memory B cells and T cells part of our immune system actually reside in our bone marrow. If you're reinfected with a pathogen or virus you've previously had, your memory B cells and T cells that are sitting in your bone marrow can respond immediately and quickly upon reintroduction of the same antigen.
Hopefully, now you can see that bones are so much more than that static skeleton hanging in your high school science teacher's lab room!
Osteoblasts and Osteoclasts
Osteoblasts are the bone cells responsible for building bone. They accomplish this by producing a collagen bone matrix and mineralizing it.
Osteoclasts remove bone by reabsorbing calcified bone and the collagen matrix.
In summary, osteoblasts contribute to increasing our bone mineral density and osteoclasts do the opposite. This exists in an equilibrium. We are constantly remodeling bones, adding to and subtracting from our bones through calcium turnover.
Bones need to be both strong and flexible at the same time, which is why they're constantly engaging in remodeling. Bones that are strong but flexible would be brittle and easily broken. Bones that are flexible but not strong would not be able to support the weight of your body or stress from your muscles pulling on them. It's a fine (and oh so beautiful!) balance.
Bone Composition
Bone is made up of about 50 to 70 percent minerals (inorganic) and 20 to 40 percent an organic matrix of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. The remaining portion of bone is a bit of water and lipid (fat).
The mineral matrix component of bone is in the form of elongated platelet-like carbonated calcium phosphate particles whose elongated direction is aligned along the long axis of type 1 collagen fibrils. Those collagen fibrils compose the organic matrix of bone, together with different types of molecules, including proteoglycans and non-collagenous proteins.
At the micro level, calcium balance is happening quite frequently. Virtually all of the body's calcium is contained within bone and therefore bone plays a very important role in calcium homeostasis.
We tend to think of bones as structural entities, which of course that is their major role. However, they're also a very important reservoir for calcium, which is another very important ion/mineral in the activity of every cell in our body.
...
Click here to read more- including info about osteopenia, osteoporosis, the role of estrogen in bone health, and key nutrients to include in your diet!
Comments