Bone health

Healthy multi-tasking — how building bones improves your heart, muscles, and blood pressure for better health

by Dr. Susan E. Brown, PhD

Topics covered in this article:

• Bones help regulate metabolism
• Bones and muscles build together
• Strong bones = strong teeth
• Bone health and blood pressure
• Bone health and heart health

What if I told you there was such a thing as “healthy multi-tasking?”

This unusual idea might shock you enough to make you stop what you were doing to listen. Or, if you are like most women, stop all five things you were doing.

After all, we all know about the negative impact of trying to do too much on our emotional, mental, and physical well-being — including our bones. An interesting observation I made in one of our studies was that the markers of bone breakdown were consistently high in one of our most fast-paced, stressed-out participants.

When I talk with women about their bone health, they are often concerned about how they are going to add “taking care of their bones” to their already too-full to-do list. That’s when I explain that taking care of your bones is healthy multi-tasking — in other words, multi-tasking that is in line with nature. By following a natural, life-supporting bone-building program, you can create multiple benefits for your entire body, including:

• Improved metabolic fitness
• Stronger muscles
• Healthier teeth and gums
• Optimal blood pressure regulation
• Better heart health

The impact of better bone health on improving your body as a whole is supported by many interesting studies. What’s more, we also have learned that there are simple ways you can benefit your bones and your body naturally — all at the same time. Let’s take a closer look together at five specific areas where you can get started right now.

Five ways better bones help your whole body

1) Improve metabolic health (and even decrease “belly fat”)
You may think of your bones as static and calcified, but they are indeed incredibly dynamic. As it turns out, our skeleton is much more of a team player than many of us realize. Our bones give us structure, allow for locomotion, incubate blood cells, and store mineral and alkaline reserves. And they even produce hormones!

One of the most important things we know now is that our skeleton functions as an “endocrine” — that is, hormone-producing — organ. One hormone-like molecule, known as osteocalcin, signals the body to enhance insulin production and sensitivity, and to reduce intra-abdominal fat. This cross-talk between bones and other organs helps regulate sugar metabolism and prevent diabetes, reduces the risk of metabolic syndrome, and limits that unwanted “belly fat.” A natural Better Bones program will enhance the production of osteocalcin, whereas bone drug therapy, by suppressing overall bone turnover, can have the indirect (and undesirable) side effect of suppressing levels of this key metabolic regulator.

A related, recently discovered function of the skeleton is to provide for healthy energy regulation. The whole-body benefit is overall metabolic fitness — resulting in reduced risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

2) Strengthen your muscles
If we’re building bone, we’re building muscle, and vice versa. Archaeologists, in fact, measure the strength and form of the skeletal remains of prehistoric peoples to estimate their muscle strength and survival skills.

I believe the correlation between bone and muscle strength is one of the most useful findings in bone health research, but also one of our most overlooked opportunities.

Bones and muscles comprise one functional “bone-muscle unit,” that is, they grow and decline in strength together. Exercise studies show that women in early post-menopause can not only maintain, but gain an average of 1.5% in bone mineral density in as little as nine months with rigorous strength-training regimes — a far cry from the 2% of lost bone that might otherwise occur. Also, many types of aerobic exercise will help — and I’m hearing more about special Pilates classes that focus on better bones.

In addition, greater longevity follows greater fitness, and this too can be gained from a comprehensive bone-building program.

3) Healthy teeth and gums
Our teeth can be imagined as the hardest of all our bones, and the jawbone is viewed as the most visible bone in the body. Receding gums are often an early sign of body-wide bone loss, and periodontal disease implies both bone loss and a challenged immune system. There are direct links between poor oral health and poor overall health as well; periodontal disease is linked not only to osteoporosis, but also to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and respiratory illnesses such as COPD or pneumonia.

All of the 20 key nutrients important to bone health are likewise essential for dental well-being. A comprehensive natural program to build bone will not only directly benefit your jawbone, but will also dramatically improve the health of your teeth and gums — and, in turn, lower your risk of long-term heart and lung disorders.

4) Achieve optimal blood pressure
Interestingly enough, Nature’s alkaline diet, so prized for preserving bone and muscle, has much in common with the leading dietary approach to reversing hypertension. We can build bone with the Alkaline for Life® Diet, and correct high blood pressure with the DASH Diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) from the National Institutes of Health. What both these well-researched eating programs share is a high intake of fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds, yielding a high-fiber, high-potassium, low-sodium diet which both preserves bone and helps maintain normal blood pressure.

Further, many nutrients key to bone health, including the minerals calcium, magnesium, potassium, plus vitamin D, are instrumental in regulating healthy blood pressure. Potassium, which has the highest recommended daily intake of all the minerals, is an especially powerful heart and bone guardian. It helps maintain healthy blood pressure, electrolyte balance, bone-crucial acid-base balance, and calcium levels.

5) Pave the way for a healthy heart
We are now seeing a clear link between bone health and heart health, and those with osteoporosis may benefit from screening for cardiovascular disease, due to the high correlation between the two. For example, in one study patients with osteoporosis were found nearly six times more likely to have coronary heart disease than those without osteoporosis. In addition, the rate of bone breakdown has been linked to heart health. In a European study, those with the highest rate of bone breakdown had a doubled risk of cardiovascular events as compared to those with low bone breakdown.

In a natural Better Bones program, everything you do for bone will also help your heart. A Better Bones program will include a full complement of the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and essential fats for building cardiac strength, as well as sufficient amounts of vitamin K — particularly K2 as MK-7 — to reduce the risk of arterial calcification. Further, following a diet high in vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds, as well as whole grains is associated with lower markers of inflammation in the blood, such as homocysteine and C-reactive protein, both of which are risk factors for heart disease as well as for osteoporosis.

Your bones are connected to the...

I am fond of saying “Osteoporosis does not stand alone,” as excessive bone loss is generally associated with other health problems. Many women may not realize that researchers have found low bone density to be associated not only with heart disease, but also with declining kidney and respiratory functioning, lowered oxygen utilization, lower grip strength, as well as decreased balance. In addition, a higher rate of bone breakdown among the aging population has been linked to higher mortality. Stabilizing your skeletal infrastructure as you age, reducing bone loss, and building strength together open the door to greater longevity and life-long fitness.

Remember the children’s song “Them Bones”?

“The hip bone connected to the back bone
The back bone connected to the neck bone
The neck bone connected to the head bone…”

As girls, singing our way through the skeletal system helped us understand how our bones were connected to each other to create a whole body. As women, it might be time to update the song and remember that “the bones are connected to — everything!”

Related to this article:

References & further reading on 5 ways building better bones builds better body-wide health

 

Last Modified Date: 05/25/2011
Principal Author: Dr. Susan E. Brown, PhD