I Have Been Recently Diagnosed With Osteoporosis. Can You Recommend What I Should Eat?

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Columbia engineered for Whatever I've recently been diagnosed with osteoporosis. Can you recommend what I should eat? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the top toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Deborah Baxter from Facebook asks, I've been recently diagnosed with osteoporosis. Can you recommend what I should eat? I just got test results back stating I have osteoporosis. I'm mortified. I've been gluten free and vegan for years. I've been retired for 2 years and get 10k plus steps daily. I'm active gardening and clearing brush on our 4 acre plot. Looked online yesterday and saw legumes on a list of things that may affect bones. Honestly, I don't know what to eat anymore. Well, I'm going to clear up some confusion for you because I know it's you can get out there and get on the Internet and it'll tell you that you should totally eat legumes and you should never eat legumes. And then you're like, okay, I don't know, what do I do? Just become an eritarian. So there's a lot of things that you can do to and keep and build strong bones. So I will be right back with that answer.

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Okay, so Debra, let's go through a couple things. First of all, awesome for you that you're gardening and clearing brush and being active and getting those steps because exercise, and specifically weight bearing exercise is so important for maintaining and building strong bones. Just like you're building strong muscles that also pulls on and helps you build strong bones. So a plus on that. And that's probably making you wonder like why the heck am I getting osteoporosis when I'm so active. Well, there's a couple other important things that come into play now. The fact that you're a vegan actually could create some issues here because you may and I don't know, but you want to make sure that you're getting enough protein into your diet and then also at least half of your body weight and protein grams at least, and probably a little bit more. And then you also want to make sure that you're getting in good omega 3s, especially EPA and DHA. And that is really hard to do as a vegan. So there's a couple things when you said vegan that popped up for as areas of concern for me, and it was omega 3s and specifically EPA and DHA because you're probably getting them from flax, which is great for your bones, chia and hemp. But to convert over to EPA and DHA takes a lot of those. So that's the first thing. If we could get you to do some some algae omega 3s, that would be great. Second thing with that is making sure you get enough vitamin D. Now vitamin D generally there are some vegan vitamin D supplements. You want to make sure though that you're getting D3 and that comes from things like mutton. So I would highly recommend getting your vitamin D tested. You're out in the sun, looks like clearing brush, gardening. But let's make sure that you have enough vitamin D somewhere between 50 and 80 nanograms per milliliter. Because vitamin D is critical for, for making sure that your body can absorb calcium. So we gotta make sure your vitamin D is where it should be. And that's another one that can be deficient. Because you're a vegetarian, make sure you get some really good mushrooms, vitamin D fortified mushrooms. Next thing, you're probably getting a lot of greens. And greens can really help alkalize you. It's very, very important to have a good alkaline acid balance because if your diet's more acidic, then you'll tend to leech more calcium from your bones and buffer yourself back to normal. Now, a lot of the acidic foods, animal protein is a big one, but grains are another one. So that's something to look at. Why would they say legumes? People might be wondering. Well, probably from the lectins and the phytates that legumes can have. But the thing is that when you properly prepare these, you really minimize that. And if you're also taking a good chelated mineral supplement, especially magnesium, then it's really probably not an issue. So that's the other thing I'd make sure that you're taking a really good, high quality, well chelated mineral supplement. I like osteoforce from Designs for Health. For that I'd also look at a product from them called Annatto E. It's a tocotrienol product that actually has been shown to help support good bone mass and maintaining bone mass. Two other key important things here. Managing stress, because stress causes you to be catabolic. Breaks down muscle, breaks down bone. And then the other challenge is that when you go through menopause and estrogen drops and if you are not replacing it with bioidentical hormones, this will also impact your heart, your brain and your bones. So if that's the case, look for foods that have good phytoestrogens. I did a great podcast with Dr. Lisa Moscone on this. Things like sesame seeds and chickpeas. So tahini would be a great thing for you. Hummus. Look for those things at all as well. Things that are going to give you some phytoestrogens. All right, there you go. Now you know what you can do and what you can eat. And if you are open to taking vitamin D3 and some fish oil, great. If not, if you're a strict vegan, then look for for omega 3s from algae. And then look how make sure you measure that vitamin D with a 25 hydroxy vitamin D test and optimize that vitamin D as well. There you go.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert.

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