It takes more than one voice to create harmony.  We need more than just calcium in our diets to build strong bones:

more than calcium

Protein

  • Collagen, the main protein in bone, is produced in your body. To begin, production starts with amino acids (primarily glycine and proline) from your diet. The next stage of collagen production requires vitamin C, zinc, and copper to connect the amino acids together.  This completes the process to create the final collagen protein, also called tropocollagen.  With this in mind, vitamin C assists in the synthesis of collagen to such an extent that the body can’t make collagen without it.
  • To optimize the protein component of bone, add bone broth to your diet, a few cups per week is a great place to start. 

Mineral

      • Many different minerals make up our bones.  Balancing our intake of minerals to keep them healthy is like conducting an orchestra.  You don’t want too many tubas, or you won’t hear the violins. Because of this, it is not enough to just focus on calcium for bone health. To get the full set of needed nutrients, eat mineral-rich foods and only take supplements made from healthy foods.  The ingredient list of your supplement bottle should not read like a chemistry set!
      • Vitamin D – without adequate Magnesium, Vitamin K2 or calcium cannot do its job. Also without healthy liver or kidneys, you cannot create the active form of vitamin D. Because of this, blood levels of vitamin D are a great start to evaluate vitamin D levels, but they are only that, just a start. To maximize vitamin D’s effectiveness you need to consider its teammates, magnesium, vitamin K2, calcium, and a healthy liver and kidneys.

Harmony

To maintain healthy, strong bones we need a harmony of diet.  Crippen Wellness focuses on the nutritional aspects of whole-body health as one of the many services we provide.  You can read more about that here.

Next week, we will look at the final myth – The Milk (Pasteurized Dairy) Does a Body Good.