How to Maintain Strong Bones for Life with JJ Virgin – Encore Presentation

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Welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show with celebrity nutrition expert, fitness hall of famer and four time New York Times best selling author, JJ Virgin. JJ is a warrior mom whose knowledge and expertise have helped change hundreds of thousands of lives. With over 3.5 million podcast downloads and appearances on Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, the Today Show, Rachael Ray, Larry King, Locke.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This show is about you, not about me. I want to help you find practical, real world ways to dial in your health and mindset so you can finally lose that weight and feel strong and energized. Stop settling for less than your personal best. It's time to find out how to look and feel better than ever. And I'll be right here with you the whole way. Hey, it's JJ here and welcome to today's podcast. So today I'm going to be interviewing myself because I talk to myself now. You're going to hear me do it. But before I jump in on that, well, first of all, we're going to tuck bones. Now here's what's happened. We threw out a little query to my community at and I have a private Facebook group, JJ Virgin Lifestyle Club, for everybody in my program. So we threw it out to them and we also threw it out to the community at large. Like, what do you want to know more about? And one of the big questions we got asked about was bone health. Osteoporosis, osteopenia. What do I need to be doing? Should I take calcium? And by the way, calcium is the least of the issues here. And it makes me crazy because I see these silly commercials on TV and there's like, you know, all you need to do is take this calcium thing. No, that is absolutely not the case. There's so much more that is super important. That's like the least important of of the majors and we really want you to be paying attention. This now. Like this isn't. You do not want to find out you have osteopenia, weakening the bones, thinning of the bones, or osteoporosis. And then do something. You want this never to happen to you. This is a really damaging problem. I have a cousin who didn't pay attention to thyroid disease for years and then ended up with super weakened bones. Nothing at this point she can do. So it's much easier to not lose it than to get it back. Although you can reclaim some bone density. Let's just not have to go there, shall we? So I'm going to share with you my recommendations. They are a lot of them I'm hoping you're already doing because they're a parts of all of my programs. And then we are going to add in some other simple things. And I just got to tell you, it's not about calcium. And I got asked that question so many times because of the virgin diet, pulling dairy out of people's diet, and people going, oh, my gosh, what about my bones? So this is the simple plan that you can do and I want you to listen to it to go, am I doing everything? Because this is where we need to be proactive, Proactive. So that we make sure that we have unlimited health. Okie dokie. All right, now I want to do a big shout out to Harley. Check from Canada says never a dull moment. Five stars. Thank you, jj, for making it easy to understand. For making it easy to understand important topics for health. You keep things light and entertaining while sharing important information. I always keep learning something new. And enjoy your guests and topics. Keep up the five star podcast. Thank you. I will. You know how I'm doing it because of you guys. I am literally keeping this up because we do this based on what you guys say you want. I'm doing kind of a combo deal now, if you've noticed it, where some of these things are stuff that I'm doing and some of these things I'm doing with a guest and basically what I'm doing is looking at everything that people say they want and then working on getting that from the best expert I know or if it's a topic that is one of my faves, I. I will just do it myself. So that's what I've been up to, seems to be working and I super appreciate all of these. I got to tell you, these. These reviews mean everything to us over here at this, at the, on the team, not just me, but everyone, because literally this is how we get our. Our grades over here is through your shout out. So I love shouting out and I'm going to be shouting out every single week. So if you haven't done it yet, please, pretty please leave a review. And while you're there, be sure to subs and share with your other pals who are realizing that it's all of our responsibilities to take control of our health, that no one else is going to care like we care. So we are the captains of our ships, all right, J.J. here. And we will be talking about how to stay strong for life. And when I say that, I'm talking about bones, baby. This has actually been a question that has come up a lot now. So six years ago, when I wrote the Virgin Diet, and long before that, as I started to pull out dairy, I got the obvious question, but, jj, how will I get my calcium? How will I get my calcium? What do I need to do about my bones? And, you know, I started my life out as an exercise physiologist and did a lot of work on spinal biomechanics when I was in grad school. And big reason why was I wanted to really look at how to prevent, and I'm going to say prevent osteoporosis. And this is something that you want to prevent. I'm convinced that this is going to be one of the biggest diseases that we have as we start to live longer. That and dementia because of elevated blood sugar, but also weak bones because we are not doing the things we need to do to keep our bones strong. And this is something that, yes, you can get back some bone density, but ideally, you never get there. You really want to avoid this from happening. And there are obvious. Not obvious. There are easy ways. Yes, I said easy because we want ultimate health, right? And we want to do it the easiest way possible. There are easiest, easy ways to do this. And so that is what I'm going to give you today. And it's not what you think it is, and that's what's super exciting here, is because when you look at this, you probably think, okay, if I want to have stronger bones, and I've been listening to any TV commercial out there, I obviously just need to take calcium. And that is not the case. And that is what's so important here, is I always used to see, okay, you need to walk more. You need to walk and take your calcium, all right? That's not going to cut it here. That is not what you need to have to do to have strong bones. So I'm going to take you through my formula of what you need to do to have strong bones so that this becomes something easy you can put into your life. And the good news is, if you've been around my community, you're probably doing a load of this already. But there might be one or two things in, in here that you're not doing. And so we will make sure that we get those in. First one, and this is where calcium actually comes in, but for a different reason. So does potassium, so does magnesium, and that is maintaining good acid alkaline balance. Now if you are under stress, it makes you more acidic. I remember when my son got hit and we were in the hospital that first night wondering, you know, few is going to make it. And the first thing that happened was I got massive heartburn and because I was getting so acidic. So stress can make you more acidic if you are not eating your vegetables, like I harp on all the time, getting your 5 to 10 servings of vegetables in every day. If you're eating a higher animal protein and grain based diet, you will be more acidic. And if you're more acidic, you leach calcium and minerals from your bone to bones to buffer that. So the first thing we want to do is have a good acid alkaline balance. So how do you do that? This is easy peasy. All you need to do is make sure that you are getting those non starchy vegetables in. And really things like sweet potatoes, et cetera count too. But I really want you to focus on the deep green leafies, by the way, those have calcium in them and magnesium and, and potassium, all the important alkalizing minerals that we need here. But I want to make sure that you're getting in 5 to 10 servings of non starchy vegetables a day. You want to eat from the rainbow because they have different phytonutrients, but you want to really stress green too. Super important. And also detoxifying. So just to remind you, half a cup cooked is a serving or a cup raw.

All right?

It's really easy to do. Throw some spinach into your morning smoothie, have a big salad for lunch, have some vegetables for dinner. In fact, you can drop your carbs pretty simply by like taking half the rice you would have had and replacing that with twice as much cauliflower. So quite often we'll do dinner. We'll have like this is our easiest thing to do. We'll have a piece of wild salmon, we'll have a half a cup of wild rice cooked in bone broth. And then we'll have a cup of cauliflower rice. We'll mix it together, it's super awesome. All right, so that's the first step. Good acid alkaline balance. Now, I mentioned stress because stress is one of the things that can make us more acidic. But stress is also super catabolic. Catabolic means breaking down. It can break down muscle, it can break down bone. So you do not want to be under stress. Here's the challenge. It's not like you can just wave a little magic wand and go, no more stress for me. Right? Wouldn't that be awesome? It doesn't work that way. And in fact, when you really look at it, it's not about not being under stress. It is about knowing how to tolerate it, knowing how to handle it, knowing how to become more resilient from it. And there are a variety of different ways to do this. We will put these in the show notes and at jjvirgin.com forward/better bones. I'll put in the show notes. My resource with Nick Ortner for tapping. Tapping is a great way can lower cortisol 27%. Meditation with, with Emily Fletcher. I was just with Emily couple days ago in New York. That was awesome. So that's another way. Burst training, high intensity interval training is another one. I have that, my fast fitness program. So basically what I would really say to you about stress is you need to learn how to manage it, how to handle higher levels of it. And how you do that really depends on you. For me, that's high intensity interval training or burst style training. And then I have some mindful practices that I do. And then my dog is like my massive stress reducer, as is my husband. So figure out what those things are for you. They're different for everybody. And of course, some things that can really help with stress, Vitamin C is a big one. And then a good adaptogenic herbal formula. I'll put some in the show notes, but I especially like things that have rhodiola in them. Rhodiola is one of my favorites. Maybe some ginseng ashwagandha. So there's some really good things that you can do to help you handle the stress. All right, next one. Now, you got to have protein, of course. It is super important for healthy bones, healthy hair, healthy skin, all of that. However, beyond that, you've got to be able to digest your protein. So you may be eating protein, but if you're over the age of 30, 35 years old, your stomach acid starts going down. If you're under any kind of stress, your stomach acid's going down, and then you won't be able to digest your protein as well. Super duper important. So I recommend taking digestive enzymes. Now here's a little caveat with that and I have a product called Metabolic Digestive Balance. Again, I'll put it in the show notes@jjvirgin.com betterbones that helps you digest protein. So there are a variety of different types of digestive enzymes out there for protein. There's betaine, hcl, which is fantastic. There are proteases. Avoid doing a comprehensive formula that helps you digest carbohydrates because we're already too good at that. If you're breaking down your carbohydrates faster, you're elevating your blood sugar faster. So we don't necessarily, necessarily want to do that. So I instead put together a product that both digests you, helps you digest protein, but while slowing down or blocking some of the carbohydrate absorption. Super important. Okay, next one. And along with that, by the way, and I talked about making my wild rice in bone broth. Bone broth. And similarly the bone broth in my bone broth shakes has collagen and collagen is super important here as well. So we've got protein and collagen dealing with stress, acid, alkaline balance. Now the next one has to do with fat. And boy it, you know, right now this is a great time for fat. It's in the spotlight. We're starting to now finally get the message out that fat isn't what makes you fat. Well, that's important here to say is the right types of fat don't make you fat. The wrong types of fat, those damaged fats, hydrogenated fats, things from the seed oils, those are very problematic. But the right types of fat can help with bone remodeling. So omega 3 fats can help with bone remodeling, both the ones from things like flax and hemp and the more, the ones that are really more important, the EPA and DHEA from fish and algae. So fish oil is super important here for maintaining good bone health because it can help with bone remodeling. Also remember, fish oil can help with in with hormone resens. I'm going to say this, this is, let's see, I will not say this five times fast. So hormone receptor sensitivity. And the reason that's important is another risk factor for having poor bone health. For starting to get either osteopenia or osteoporosis is having lower estrogen or progesterone. So estrogen and progesterone are key. Estrogen for both helping you, both of them for bone remodeling and if you've got, if you're going through menopause, of course this can be start to become problematic. So this is where you can talk to your doctor about having a looking at bioidentical hormones. Here's the thing, you really want to get a good baseline for your bone mineral density early. Like I actually did my first one when I was 30 and I've been monitoring it every five years since. Now I'm not at risk factor for osteoporosis because of anything I do. Lifestyle wise, I everything I'm telling you to do are things that I've done and have been doing for years. However, I was put on a medication in my 20s that sets you up for early menopause and osteoporosis. So I have been monitoring this for years and years to make sure and I've been more than proactive about keeping my bones healthy. And I'm still, still on the DEXA scores. That's the gold standard for looking at your bone density. I'm way above where I should be. So it's important. This is not something that you want to all of a sudden get tested at 50, 55, 60 and go oh my gosh, I have a problem. You want to monitor this all along the way so at the point you see any type of an issue, you can correct it. But again if you're doing these things, you should never actually start to get an issue. So that's what's super important. So estrogen and progesterone also super important here. Now another hormone, you probably don't think of this as a hormone, but it is, is vitamin D. And vitamin D is critical because it helps you, your body absorb the calcium. Now ideally you've got good vitamin D because you're out in the sunshine 20, 30 minutes a day with your out sunscreen, getting your arms and legs exposed. But if you're living in like Minnesota in the winter or you're wearing sunscreen, that ain't happening. And genetically there are certain people who just don't do well when they are in absorbing calcium. Genetically they just don't do well. So the deal is you want to make sure you're testing your vitamin D levels. And that test is called 25 Hydroxy Vitamin D. And what you really want to be looking for is a level between 50 and 80 ng per ML. Vitamin D is called a pro hormone. It is responsible for so many things in your body. Kind of sits at the top of the whole hormone cascade. So important for making your thyroid work. Well, I'll tell you a little story about thyroid in a second because that's another critical thing. But here's an important thing. While I said vitamin D directs helps you absorb calcium, here's the other key part of that. Vitamin K directs calcium into the right places. So it's not just enough to absorb calcium. You've got to direct it into the right places. And that's why you never want to take vitamin D without K. The only exception would be if you're on any kind of a blood thinner. But other than that, you always want to make sure you're taking vitamin D with vitamin K. It is super duper duper important. So you want to test your vitamin D levels, you want to optimize to get to be 50 to 80 ngs per ML. If you live in a state seasonal place, I have to say that because I kind of like bop around to non seasonal places where there's not sunshine every single day and you're not getting out into it. You might find during the winter you have to take twice as much vitamin D as you do during the summer. All right, so that's the next piece. Now I mentioned that vitamin D was important for the thyroid. If you are hypothyroid, that will also weaken your bones. I have a cousin who never went to the doctor. Oh my gosh. For, for like over a decade, a massive hypothyroidism and has the weakest bones. I mean, basically it's already broken multiple bones. And just for something to think about, I am having a hip replacement here in a week. And I really injured my hip out walking my dog. I fell, I was holding my dog, a dog chased my dog. I grabbed my dog, fell over, tripped over a bunch of trash cans and fell over onto my hip. Now, I thought about this because, yes, I hurt my hip and ended up, I'm gonna have to have a little replacement. But I didn't break my hip, which could have been really problematic. So I looked at that and went, wow, I could have broken my hand, I could have broken my hip. I could have broken like, like I've got good strong bones here. And that's what you really want to look at is you want to have hips because you want to have bones mean you are going to. Things happen and you want to make sure that your bones can support you. Which is why when you're looking at how to build strong bones, you want to make sure that you are doing exercise that does something called axial loading the spine. So when you look at exercise, I hear people say, oh yeah, I walk, so I have great bones. That really doesn't do it because you want to put a load down your spine. So. So when you really look at how you're going to build strong bones with exercise, what you want to do is stand up. You want it. First of all, we're not bolted to the floor, right? So this is where you're going to be better off with free weights and standing in a less, a more situation where you need to create balance, right? But then think about standing up maybe on a Bosu ball and pushing dumbbells over your head. When you do that, you load your spine, which is so super critical, right? For bone density loading your spine, or let's say that you do a squat with dumbbells on your shoulders, you're putting a load on your spine. So I want you to think about doing weight bearing exercise, progressive, that creates a load on your spines, on your hips, right? These are the areas that are at the highest risk. And then finally, magnesium. You know, everyone talks about how important calcium is and honestly, the biggest mineral deficiency I see with people is magnesium. And so here's a little secret on how you can tell how much magnesium you need. First of all, you can do what's called an RBC or red blood cell magnesium to look at it. You can also look at an amino acid or I'm sorry, an organic acid test. And that can show you functionally if you need more magnesium. But here's a simple one that you can do at home. Take a very well absorbed magnesium, not a poorly absorbed one. So something that's got album minerals. This is the type I use my daily essential packs, which will give you the foundation of what you need every day. But you may need more. So I will put a resource in JJvirgin.com betterbones as to a type of magnesium, magnesium glycinate. And what you do is you, you take 500 milligrams before you go to bed and you see how you feel the next day. And if you don't notice any loosening of your stools, then go up a little bit from there and you may find that you don't have any loosening of stools till you get over 1000 1500. And if that's the case, then you're going to need more. Like I take a thousand milligrams of magnesium every day. That is what works best for me. So super important. Again, we tend to think of calcium, but magnesium is the mineral that people tend to be deficient in. So that is the other one that I want you to think about. All right? Those are the top things that you need to do to build better bones. Now, after the break, I'll be answering listeners questions, so stay with me.

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It flagged that message as a scam. McAfee's scam detector automatically quickly spots and alerts you to suspicious texts, emails, and deep fake videos. Learn more@mcafee.com Online Protection welcome back. This is the time where I answer listeners questions. So I recorded this episode live on my Facebook page at JJ Virgin Official. And so there were a bunch of comments going on while I was recording it. And one from Julie said when I was talking about doing axial loading of the spine sounds so official. She said I need to get better at burst training and resistance training. So I thought, all right, you know what? That's not really a question. It's a statement. But in a way it is a question because really I would look at that and go, how can I get better at weight training and resistance training. Now, first thing is ideally you can do this in the morning. I will be candid now and tell you that today I did it in the morning. I did some burst training the first thing in the morning. But generally that's my best brain time. So I generally work out somewhere between 11 and two each day because that's when I kind of like, I think a lot of people might take a nap. It's my nap and it gives me kind of a new reboot of the day. So that's what I try to do. Doesn't always work. Sometimes I have to do it first thing in the morning, but what I never do is later in the evening because I lived in Japan and taught aerobics there back when I was in my 20s. And when I did that, when I, when I taught aerobics later in the evening, I didn't go to sleep for hours and hours and hours. So I would avoid that. But what you want to do is this. You want to schedule this in to a time in your schedule. First of all, you've got to decide why you want to do this. Why it's non negotiable. In fact, they have correlated not exercising to be worse for your health than smoking cigarettes. So not saying to smoke cigarettes by any stretch, but you got to exercise. So that's the first thing. Second thing is you've got to just schedule it in that it's non negotiable. This is why it's fantastic. Have a personal trainer, especially one that you have to pay for in advance. And if you late cancel, they just charge you. In fact, back when I was a personal trainer, I felt like I should charge double when people like canceled because honestly I wanted to do everything I possibly could to keep them from having, from doing that right? I mean, because they have to make it and themselves a priority. This is non negotiable. It is that key critical for your health. So you want to find a time in your day when you know that you can absolutely get it in. And here's the thing, don't start out with some lofty, unrealistic, crazy goals like I'm going to work out every single day for an hour. If you're not working out at all, if that's the case, start with 10 minutes a day, five days a week. That's totally doable because everything counts. Of course we want you moving more. This is where it's great. Having a dog that you can take out for walks. That's an easy way to solve that. But the next thing I want you to do is start like one day, do, do five to 10 minutes of high intensity interval training. The next day do 10 minutes of some resistance style training. What I know to be true is when you get started you end up doing longer. But even if it's just that amount of time, the less time you have, the harder you tend to work anyway. But the biggest thing you have to do is schedule it into your book, non negotiable and ideally get a coach or an accountability partner. You have to commit to and put some money on that sucker that you can give to your favorite charity. So like commit with an accountability partner and commit to what is absolutely. You can put into your schedule, say five days a week, ten minutes a day that you're going to make happen no matter what and then do it for a month. And whoever, like if someone misses it, there's a fine, right? Do that because at the end of that you'll start to make this a habit. Once you start to really get into this, you feel so much better when you're doing it that you couldn't imagine missing it. And that's where I want to get you to. That's why when my son was in the hospital, I found a gym close by. I was working out at the hospital. I would at least run the stairs. I take him out and push his wheelchair all over the place. I was doing whatever it took to get the movement in. So if I could make that happen when I was launching a book from the hospital with my son in a coma, no one else has any excuses as far as I'm concerned. Like, and I've got my buddy Sean Stevenson. So there's two Sean Stevensons. There's Sean Stevenson of the Model Health show and then there's Sean Stevenson of the three Foot Giant, who's three foot tall, has this rare bone disease where he breaks bones easily. And I watched him do this and he's in a wheelchair. This crazy workout routine. I thought, oh my gosh, like everyone else has to stop their complaining. Like it was amazing. So that is my thing. I'm going to say the Nike slogan, just do it, schedule it in, get an accountability partner and make it happen. Alrighty, one little reminder. If you have not subscribed yet, make sure you do and share this on over with friends who, you know, want to be the CEO of their healthcare. All right, see you soon. Bye.

That's all for this episode of the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show, which marks another step towards a healthier body and mind. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show and we'll talk to you next week. Toyota THON is on, so stop by your local Toyota dealer and test drive a spacious grand Highlander or ready for any RAV4 with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit buyatoyota.com for more Toyota let's go places.

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