Five things you should do to keep your bone stronger.

Bones are like our parents, we do not realize or appreciate their role in our life when we are young, but we realize their importance only when we start to age, and realize how important their role has been in our life with a tinge of regret, we feel, ah…. if only we had given them respect and due importance when we were young…. isnt it?

Same way the bone should be respected and given importance when you are young, only then you can reap the benefits when you are old and not regret about it.

So, how to respect and give importance to your bone?

1. Proper and optimum exercises.

The word optimum is to be underlined, because if you overdo your exercises you might land into trouble. Just keep everything optimum. Exercise for half an hour daily in your young age goes a long way in making your bones and muscles stronger when you are old. If you are in some Sedentary work make sure you walk,  jog or do some basic exercises every day at least for half an hour. Their are fitness centers and marketing agencies to help you out to choose what suits you best.

2. A balanced and Edible diet.

Diet is one word which is so often misused and abused, i have seen so many people have diet and eat food as if the whole sky will fall down if they don’t do it. The diet is like the shirt which we wear it should suit us, don’t go for exotic, impossible and unwarranted diets marketed in the media. The basic diet of every region with is own local ingredients is most of the time adequate. Just stick yourself to that, make sure you have one glass of milk everyday, adequate fruits and vegetables.

3. Walking

Walking is one of the most important exercise a person can do to safeguard himself from at least 50% of his old age illnesses. So, keep walking but here also do not over do it, the ideal walking time for a person is brisk walk for 30 minutes everyday. Do not walk more than that on a daily basis, that would be counter productive and might result in excessive wear and tear of the cartilage in your knee and burning out.

4. Out door activities

This has reduced so much in our life that we hardly realize their importance, exposure to sun rays is every important for Vitamin D synthesis which most of us forego. Even some 20, 30 years back just think about our mode of transportation, we had to walk for the bus or railway station for half an hour or we had to cycle. Children used to play outside more often exposing themselves to sunlight, no cellphone or video games then. But nowadays we start the car, or bike with helmet and full gear from our house to the destination never exposing ourselves to the sun light. Since this has become our life style we need to consciously modify our lifestyle to expose ourselves to sunlight. So taking up outdoor activities like trekking, walking, swimming can improve your Vitamin D level to a great extent and make a big difference.

5. Improper and Harmful Diet

So we have seen what we have to do to have a strong bone, now we will see what is not to be done. Junk foods and other foods like pesticide laden fruits will have to be avoided or atleast reduced. Never be taken in by marketing strategies claiming extraordinary outcomes like, we will grow over night by 5 inches, lose 20 kg within 2 days or your child will become a superman in 24 hours, if they take some particular diet or food. These tall claims will tax you and your child extremely hard, use your commonsense and logic before accepting this sort of diets.

Consciously i have not said anything about Osteoporosis.. we will talk about it some time later.

Dr.Elangovan MS, Mch Orth,