Healthy Bones Action Week 2020
Healthy Bones Action Week is an annual affair to encourage people to understand the importance of maintaining healthy and stronger bones and how your diet, exercise and lifestyle choices can impact your bone health.
Why is bone health important?
Bones provide structural support to your body weight and anchor vital organs in your body.
For example, the spinal cord that facilitates messages between your brain and the body is protected by the backbone and the skull shelters the brain. Bones also form the shape of the face.
Your bones are living tissues, however, they are in continuous change, with new bone tissues replacing the old ones. This natural condition helps to keep your bones stronger and active.
But as we grow old, this natural replacement can shift out of balance impacting your bone’s strength and ability. A condition called osteoporosis is likely to develop gradually as you age.
Osteoporosis and Ageing
According to AIWH, 3.8% of Australians are living with this condition, mainly impacting older men and women.
Age is one of the defining factors that causes gradual loss of bone mass making it brittle and leading to a higher risk of breakage. In consequence, even a minor injury can cause broken bones causing adverse pain, loss of ability to walk or even premature death.
There is also a significant loss of bone formation when we grow older.
Know your risks factors
There are a number of risk factors that are likely to cause osteoporosis, including age, sex, lifestyle choices contributing to its development.
Unchangeable Risks
Your age, sex and race are some of the risk factors that can trigger osteoporosis and something which is out of your control. Women are more prone to develop this condition and as a result, almost 1 in every 4 Australian women over the age of 75 is impacted by osteoporosis.
Calcium deficiency
Calcium is necessary for building and maintaining stronger bones. Since calcium is not naturally produced in our body, a calcium-deficient diet can lead to weaker bones over time and cause osteoporosis. For effective absorption of calcium from food, our body also requires Vitamin D that is found in abundance in fatty fishes like salmon, mackerel and tuna.
Lifestyle choices
People who tend to have a sedentary lifestyle, with excessive alcohol consumption, smoking and without any routine exercise have a higher risk of suffering from osteoporosis than people who lead an active life.
Osteoporosis treatment
Visiting your local doctors or GPs are the ideal start if you have concerns about your bone health.
If you’re over the age of 50, a regular bone health check is recommended.
Your GP can guide you to a management plan and conduct a bone density test. You would be able to ask your questions on diet and nutrition and get a referral to a specialist if your doctor suggests.
For an online appointment with our doctors, click the links below on your preferred location.
You can also contact us to speak to our staff for further details.
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