No one can escape the results of an aging body. Regardless of the advancement in technology, we are all going to experience a decline in our bone and joint health. There’s no avoiding it, but there are ways to delay it. There are ways to slow it down so you can stay on your feet long into your elder years.
Why Do Our Bones Get Weaker?
As we age, the bones in our body begin to slowly lose the calcium and other minerals that kept us on our feet for so long. We start losing the disks in the vertebrae. These gel-like disks are what keeps the bones in our spine from grinding together. They also keep the bones in our joints from grinding together too. What’s worse is we may experience calcium buildup around our shoulders that makes them stiffer. Our muscles also get weaker as we age, and these muscles are what help support our bones. In general, as we age, our bones just become more brittle.
What Happens When Our Bones Get Weaker?
A number of things can happen as we experience a decrease in bone health. The first is inflammation. Inflammation can happen in our bones or in our joints. Joint inflammation is more commonly known as arthritis. Arthritis can occur in one or more joints in your body. The inflammation from arthritis comes with mild to severe joint pain. Not only that, there are a number of different types of inflammatory arthritis such as osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis.
When you suffer this joint pain you will experience redness, swelling, or stiffness. Unfortunately, when this occurs in larger joints, you could lose cartilage a lot faster. You can also lose a range of motion in your joint, making it difficult to move or even walk. Smaller joints are not as bad, but you could lose the ability to grip without suffering intense pain.
Arthritis can eventually lead to worse symptoms such as fever, fatigue, weight loss, or general malaise. When we’re unable to move, we end up becoming more sedentary, which is not good for those who want to have a healthy aging process. When we become sedentary, we begin to lose weight as we are not getting the physical activity needed to stay healthy. We experience a rise in blood pressure, more weight that puts more pressure on our joints, diabetes, or even certain cancers. High blood pressure, or hypertension, can also lead to serious issues such as a heart attack or stroke. These all sound like horrible outcomes if we start to suffer from joint pain. We could also end up ending our lives with the assistance of wheelchairs or walkers, so it’s best to take preventative measures in order to have great bone health as we age. Let’s take a look at 3 bone health tips for seniors.
Exercise
Exercise is one of the best ways to prevent the loss of bone health as we get older. Bone is still living tissue and the cells need stimulation. Staying active can help prevent bone loss. Not only that, but exercise helps keep the muscles around our bones strong. The muscles around our bones are responsible for supporting our bones and help prevent injury. If you’re looking for exercises that specifically help with bone health, then you’ll want to take a look into weight-bearing exercises. Basically, any exercise that has your body working against gravity such as walking, stair-climbing, weight-lifting, or even dancing can help your bones. It’s always best to check with your doctor before you start doing any sort of exercise routine, especially if you already suffer from a medical condition. Of course, exercise is just one tool in an entire toolbox of bone loss prevention.
A Bone Healthy Diet
For your bone health, it’s important to get plenty of calcium. Calcium helps strengthen your bones and sometimes we do not get enough of it in our diets. You will also want to get enough vitamin D in your body. This vitamin D makes it so your body can absorb calcium as well. It’s recommended to get at least 700mg of calcium a day. It might be difficult to get calcium in your body because a lot of the food that contains calcium are foods people don’t eat enough of, possibly due to personal taste. Broccoli, cabbage, tofu, and boney fish all contain calcium, so it’s understandable why people don’t get enough of it. You can also get calcium from milk, which is the most common source of calcium, so even if you don’t enjoy eating the other sources of calcium, a good bowl of cereal to start the day can do wonders for your bone health. Vitamin D might be even more difficult to get into a diet. Those who live further north might not get enough vitamin D because they’re not getting as much exposure to the sun or access to foods that contain vitamin D such as oily fish or powdered milk. One last thing to try when trying to keep healthy bones is supplements. Let’s take a look at one of the best ones you should try.
BONE-REVIVE™
It contains plenty of vitamin K needed by your bones to stay healthy. Vitamin K works alongside vitamin C to help you keep strong and healthy bones. What’s best is, BONE-REVIVE™ also contains enough vitamin C to not only support healthy bone development but helps support the collagen tissue in your bones as well. BONE-REVIVE™, a supplement manufactured in an FDA-approved lab and backed by clinical research, also contains magnesium. Magnesium is important for helping preserve the structure of your bone by supplying it with calcium. When you get enough magnesium in your body, you’re greatly reducing your risk of heart disease, kidney stones, heart attacks, stroke, and bone-related issues such as arthritis.
Following these three tips will help your bones age gracefully with you. Make sure you follow these tips consistently so you can have a healthy aging process.
