Bone Health: Sound Suggestions for Stronger Bones

Bone is a complicated organ made of collagen, proteins, calcium, phosphate, and cells that remodel and maintain bone. It requires many nutrients obtained from the diet for remodeling and maintaining the bony structure. Nutrition science has identified a select few of these nutrients as particularly important for bone health. We will highlight those here. But remember that in food, these nutrients do not occur in isolation; they are present in nature packaged in various combinations of fat, protein, minerals, etc. Only in the past few decades has it been possible to consume these nutrients in isolation in the form of supplements. As is often the case, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and in making recommendations for bone health we will emphasize obtaining these nutrients from food sources whenever possible. More than 40 million Americans have osteoporosis and over two million of them experience a fragility fracture due to osteoporosis every year. If a patient is being treated with medication for osteoporosis, we emphasize that these nutrients, the essential nutrients required for bone formation, are the building blocks that the medication uses to form bone. This seems a simplistic explanation, but many patients think that the medications themselves contain these nutrients. All bone-active pharmacologic agents have been tested in clinical trials with additional supplemental calcium and most with vitamin D as well. Presumably, the effects of the pharmacologic agents depend to some extent on these supplemental nutrients.