How To IMPROVE BONE HEALTH - Kevin Ellis "Bone Coach" On Dr. Joy Kong Podcast

You've got approximately 10 million Americans that have osteoporosis and another 44 million that have low bone density. One in two women and up to one in four men are going to break a bone in their lifetime due to osteoporosis. For women, the incidence of low bone density is greater than that of heart attack, stroke, and breast cancer combined. Stress can be a major contributor to bone loss.

You ended up addressing your stress and your digestive issue, and that's the starting point of how you were able to help improve your bones.

Really, our focus is making sure that you can have stronger bones and an active future with the people you love most.

Hi, welcome to Dr. Joy Kong's show. As you know, I'm a stem cell specialist and longevity expert. And my purpose for you is to help you look great, feel great, and be great. So I've gathered together some of the best longevity experts in the health and wellness space so we can share great tips with you to help you live a most vibrant life. It's all about the quality of life, not so much about the length. You know, I stress quality. So today I have a very special guest, Kevin Ellis. So I want to introduce Kevin a little bit. Hi, welcome to the show. Kevin.

Joy, thanks so much for having me. Great to be here.

So Kevin is known as the bone coach. So he is a certified integrative nutrition health coach, podcaster, YouTuber and bone health advocate. And he is the founder of bonecoach.com so he actually suffered from osteoporosis in his early 30s, and the challenge allowed him to seek ways to improve his own health. Now he's sharing his knowledge with people to help enhance women's health who have osteopenia, osteoporosis. He also designed a three step process that we can talk about. His mission is to help over 1 million people around the world to build stronger bones. I'm really excited to talk with Kevin because I'm so interested in the story and what he found out. So, Kevin, maybe you can share a little bit what happened in your 30s. This is a very strange occurrence. So tell us the story.

I know, right? Because when you hear about bone loss and osteopenia and osteoporosis, you're not thinking about a young man. You're thinking about your mother or your grandmother or somebody who was hunched over with a cane, you know, worried about their future. That's kind of what people think is osteopenia and osteoporosis. But for me, being a young male that had all these different health issues kind of brewing under the surface for many, many years. Having fatigue, high stress, poor sleep, not a lot of energy, not having the best diet, nutrition when I was a kid, having smoked at a certain point in my life, having consumed alcohol excessively at one point in my life, all those kinds of things can contribute. And then for me, I got to the point where I was having digestive issues, severe digestive issues, and I come to find out I had celiac disease. So I was diagnosed with celiac disease, and shortly thereafter, I was told I had osteoporosis. And osteoporosis, it literally means porous bone, right? So what was happening was celiac disease, for those who aren't familiar, is when you ingest gluten, what happens is it starts to damage your nutrient absorption centers in your body. And those are called villi. They're these tiny little hair like projections that cover your small intestine, and they help absorb the nutrients from the food you eat. Well, when I was consuming gluten, those nutrient centers, those villi, were being damaged and blunted to the point where I couldn't absorb my nutrients. And because you still need calcium every single day, your body does to execute its daily functions, my body wasn't getting it and wasn't absorbing it. So it had to go to my largest mineral reserves in my body, which were my bones. And it started pulling that calcium and those other nutrients from my bones. And that's how I developed osteoporosis in my early 30s. And, you know, a lot of people are shocked when they hear that. I was. I was actually really shocked at that time because. And I was. I was actually really scared, too. You know, and my background was I was a pretty tough kid growing up in Missouri. You know, I worked on a farm as my first job. I went in the Marine Corps, spent time in the Marine Corps. So I always felt like somebody who was really tough and somebody who could endure a lot. But when I was diagnosed with osteoporosis, you know, single fell swoop, that identity was taken from me, just stripped away.

How do they even know to check your bone density?

Great question. Because a lot of people listening, so let's even just talk about the reason why I was diagnosed with celiac disease. And I ended up having elevated liver enzymes. And all the other doctors that, you know, I was meeting with, nobody said, hey, you know, after we found out I had celiac disease and still had elevated liver enzymes, nobody said, hey, we should get this guy a bone density. And then it was a physician's assistant who asked me one day and just said, hey, have you had a bone density scan done? I think we should do one. And I was like, no, I haven't. And I thought that the results were going to come back, that it was just a check in the box and that my bone density was okay. But it came back that I had osteoporosis.

Why did he ask you that question?

Because he probably knew or had thought that I was malabsorbing nutrients for a long time and he knew the impact that that probably was going to have on my bones. And that's actually one of the things now that I recommend to people that are younger, with digestive issues, or maybe they had an eating disorder or poor diet, nutrition, or led a sedentary lifestyle when they were younger, or maybe even took medications, certain medications when they were younger that we get those bone density scans earlier, earlier on in life. And that's actually, bone density scan is also called the DEXA scan, Dual energy X ray, absorpt geometry. And it's a painless test. It's like an X ray, very low levels of radiation. You lay down on the machine, it does a scan and it tells you your bone mineral density, the measure of how much bone you have. Then it generates a score. That score is called a T score. The T score is telling you how much your bone mass is different from the bone mass of an average healthy 30 year old adult. If you have a score of plus one or minus one or somewhere in between there, that's normal and healthy, negative 1 to negative 2.5, that's considered osteopenia or low bone mass. Negative 2.5 and lower, negative 2.6, negative 2.7, so on and so forth. That's considered osteoporosis. The greater that negative number becomes, the greater risk of fracture and the lower the bone strength and bone density would be. So most people are not getting these, most women especially are not getting these until their 50s, their 60s as a check in the box. But in my opinion that's too late. So the earlier we can get them just to get a baseline in which to monitor future changes, the better off you're going to be.

Okay, how bad was yours?

I had, you know, at that point in time I had negative three scores in the, in the negative threes in my lower lumbar. And then the other areas had, you know, some, some of the other areas I had, you know, just right into the osteo, osteoporotic range and then osteopenia and some other areas too. So it was kind of a, kind of a mix. And that kind of makes sense. Like in your, in your spine you have different types of bone in your body, right? So in your spine you have more trabecular bone. In other areas of your body, you could have more cortical bone. Trabecular bone is more blood and nutrients flow freely through. That can also be, can also be another reason why you may lose bone a little bit quicker in some of those areas that have a higher concentration of trabecular bone too.

So that must be scary. You felt fragile, I guess.

Yeah, I felt fragile. I was completely concerned. I actually remember when I. They didn't even tell me in person. It was a letter that I had gotten in the mail and it just said, you've been diagnosed with that or you have osteoporosis, go on a gluten free diet. That was, that was what I got. And I was like, you know what I actually remember the blood rushed out of my face and I was just like, I just felt deflated and really upset. And then I was like, let me go get a second opinion. I got a second opinion. It confirmed the diagnosis, and then I had to start this whole journey.

So what are the potential implications when somebody is diagnosed with osteoporosis? Like what does it really mean for their lives?

You're diagnosed with osteoporosis, that reduced bone density could also mean a reduction. It's going to mean a reduction in bone strength, but I'm going to talk about bone strength in a minute. But when you have that happen, that's going to increase your risk of fracture. And fractures are especially as people age. You've got approximately 10 million Americans that have osteoporosis. Get another 44 million that have low bone density. One in two women and up to one in four men are going to break a bone in their lifetime due to osteoporosis. For women, the incidence of low bone density is greater than that of heart attack, stroke and breast cancer combined. So this is, it's not like a small issue, right? And it's actually, it's actually increasing. Like we're having more, more cases of low bone density over time, which kind of makes sense because our minerals, there's not as many minerals in the soil, diet and lifestyle factors that are. That just the way we're living our lives, there's going to be more things contributing to bone loss that we're encountering. So that can severely, you know, if you have a hip Fracture especially, too. Only a smaller percentage of patients can actually walk across a room unaided, six months later. And then you've got, you know, every year you've got about 300,000 hip fracture patients. A lot of them don't regain their previous function too. And there's, that's really the concern that takes place, especially as people get older. You don't want to be, you know, sitting in a room by yourself, watching your loved ones in your life pass you by. That that's really not the future we want. And that's. We focus on helping people make sure that doesn't happen.

Wow. So what do you think are some of the roadblocks for people to have better bone health? Like, what's preventing people these days?

The first one I would say is at the point of diagnosis, at the time they're told, hey, you have osteoporosis or you have osteopenia. The recommendation that's made at that point in time is take some calcium, take some vitamin D, go for a walk, and here's a bone medication. And that is woefully inadequate. Right. It's not enough. There's a lot more to it than that. And what you have to start doing is you have to first understand, are you still actively losing bone right now? Because a single bone density scan is not going to tell you that. You have to start looking at what are called bone turnover markers first. So there is a test called the ctx, CT low peptide test, the serum CTX test. And what that test looks at is it looks at the activity level of cells that are breaking down bone. Your bones are collagen. Bone are made of collagen protein. When that bone is broken down, it releases collagen. And that can actually be picked up and measured. That's what this test is looking at. If that activity level is really high, that can be an indicator of active bone loss. Okay. And something that has to be addressed. Another test to look at would be the 24 hour urine calcium test. And that's not looking at, it's not looking at the activity level of cells that are breaking down bone, but it is looking at calcium, which is the primary mineral constituent of bone. So if you have high levels of calcium in your urine, that could be a contributor also. But then you also want to look at some of the other parts, some of the other parts of that picture. So understand, first, if you're still actively losing bone, the reason that's a roadblock is because most of the time, most doctors are not going to Check that first. Right. And especially if it's like your general practitioner, if they're not familiar with the interpretation of the test, a lot of times that test won't be ordered because it creates a liability. Right. So sometimes what they might do is refer you out to an endocrinologist. But even then you might not get, get the help that you need in those situations or the information that you need to. That's kind of the first roadblock, I would say, is like, are you actively losing bone? Then let's say those results come back and you are still losing bone. There's something contributing to that loss. Yes, horrible hormones play a role, but that's not always the underlying root cause. And a lot of times there could be multiple root cause issues. And a lot of people don't know this, but there, there are two types of osteoporosis.

There's.

There's primary osteoporosis that's related to the decrease in estrogen. And postmenopausal women. Right. Estrogen has a protective effect on bone. When estrogen levels decrease, as they do during menopause, that's going to cause an increase in, in the activity level of cells that break down bone. Those are called osteoclasts, and going to cause an increase in those cells. But then there's a whole nother cause of osteoporosis, and that's secondary osteoporosis. And that's when bone loss and osteoporosis occurs as a result of behaviors, conditions, disorders, diseases, medications, all those kinds of things. That's the category I fell into. Right. Celiac disease, malabsorbing nutrients for a long time. But there are a lot of other things that fall into that, and you just have to make sure that you've addressed all those issues. And a lot of times that does require further testing.

So do you feel that the rate of osteoporosis these days is a lot more than 100 years ago?

I would venture to say yes. And I think that's going to continue to rise.

And why do you think that is.

The way a lot of people lead their lives, we're very like stress. Stress can be a major contributor to bone loss. So if we're on edge and we've got constant psychological stress, like the stress doesn't always have to be a lion, like back a couple hundred thousand years ago. It doesn't always have to be that kind of stress that puts us into fight or flight mode. It could be psychological stress, fear, worry, emotionally charged thoughts, family Conflict, finances, keeping up with the perfect lives of the Joneses on social media. Right. All those things drive that fight or flight response, and that's going to flood your system with cortisol, adrenaline, and those are normal hormones. But it's important to have those hormones at the right times in the right amounts. Right. And if you're just constantly flooding that, that's not going to be a good thing for, for your general health, but also for your bones long term. That's one of the things that can. That can contribute to that then the other stressful life. A lot of people, you know, are shopping on the inner aisles of the stores processed packaged foods that are devoid of nutrients or not, like, they don't have good nutrient density, which are going to help support healthier bones, are. Even the. Even the produce that you're purchasing now is not going to have the level of minerals that, you know, that were available 100, 200, 300 years ago. Even. So there are ways to add those nutrients back in, but the average person is not really paying attention to their bone health. Right. We think of like our bones are just these static structures, you know, that hold us up. And that's. That's about all they do. But they're actually living tissues. They're endocrine organs, which is really interesting.

Can you talk about that a little bit about being an endocrine organ?

Yeah. I mean, so bones are part of the. They're part of the endocrine system, right? So they supply minerals and nutrients. They, you know, a lot of blood flows through bone. It's. It's not like they're just these hard, solid structures that don't have any life inside of them. They actually, they help with blood cell production and things like that. Like, there are so many things that go on inside your bones, and it has just a lot greater of an impact than most people think on their general health.

So how did you regain your health?

You have to go through a process of figuring all these, all the important pieces out, and just to walk through it at a high level, you have to identify if you're still actively losing bone right now. You got to figure out the root causes of that bone loss. That's testing, right? That's working with your doctor, having those conversations, knowing what tests to order, knowing what the results mean when those tests come back. A lot of times, when a test comes back in a conventional range, your test may be normal by conventional standards, but you could still have a functional deficiency, or you could still have a condition that's indicating Something has to be addressed within the body. The next thing you have to do is you have to make sure you address your diet, your, your digestion, your absorption. You have to make sure you're getting the right nutrients to build stronger bones. Because if you, if you don't have the right inputs, you can't produce stronger outputs. Right. And the reason why that's important is, and it kind of happens on three layers. First, you have to be taking in the right nutrients in the right amounts. You have to be absorbing those nutrients, and those nutrients have to make it to the cell level. A lot of times, even when somebody's eating healthy, they might not be hitting layer one. And it's really hard for the rest of those things to line up downstream too. And the last part of what people ask they have to do is you have to focus on reducing your stress, improving your sleep, actually exercising. Right. Providing enough stimulus for your muscles, for your bones to get to the point where you can actually have a meaningful impact on your health too. And hormone optimization plays a big role in that too.

So you were in your 30s, you got diagnosed with osteoporosis. So your process. So you got the scan done, the right scan, the ctx, right?

Yeah. So the CTX is the blood test, right? Right. The DEXA scan is, is the actual bone density scan. I told you I would come back to bone strength. So when you go get a bone density scan, what it's telling you is your bone density, how much bone you have, the actual mineral content of your bone. What it's not telling you is your bone quality, the actual micro architecture, the structural integrity of that bone and how it's organized, those two things combine to create bone strength. So a lot of times when you go get a bone density scan, yes, it's still a helpful tool and it's still going to tell you it's going to give you at least one marker, but we usually want to have another marker which is bone quality. There is an add on software to the DEXA scan called TBS Trabecular Bone Score. And what that score can do, you got to ask for it. And there is a place called Metamaps that you can, you can actually look up to see if there's a location that has TBs near you. But if you can get those two things together, you're going to get a much fuller picture of your actual bone strength. Now if you have, if you are told you have osteoporosis, you, you need to, you still need to address it. Like you still need to do something. And it is always better to be on the side of prevention and not reaction. So I would always prefer to see somebody getting ahead of it than, you know, in some of the situations we have people that come to us that have already had five or 10 fractures and maybe they're on a bone medication and are going to continue on with one. I would say most people, though, they're trying to do everything they possibly can naturally before considering that as an option.

I assume you ended up addressing your stress and your digestive issue and that's the starting point of how you were able to help improve your bones.

That's right. You have to figure out and address those root cause issues. And even for me, when I was younger, I had a background in weightlifting and, you know, strength training and resistance training, which is a really. Let's actually talk about that for a second because that plays a major role. But I also had to address the digestive issues too. I had to resolve the issues that I had with celiac disease, stop consuming gluten, go on a gluten free diet. But going on a gluten free diet is not enough. You actually, you have to start eating whole foods, foods that are actually not processed. Right. You don't have to be processed food. Just because it says gluten free on the, on the box doesn't make it a health food. I see so many gluten free foods that are loaded with chemicals and garbage that we should never be putting into our bodies.

Right. It's the same buzzword as fat free.

Yes.

Doesn't mean it's good for you.

No. And so for, we have vitamins that are fat soluble. Right. That our body's not going to be able to use those nutrients unless we have fat. Vitamin D, vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin E. Those are fat soluble nutrients. Which means you have to consume those nutrients with fat in order for your body to be able to use them to the best of their ability. So let's talk about exercise for a second because I do think that's a really important part of creating a bone health plan.

I'm just curious. For celiac disease, I don't think traditional or conventional medicine really have very good solutions. So were you working with an integrated medicine physician or did you try everything on your own to, to address how you, you know, besides gluten, there are other causes.

Yeah. So celiac disease, autoimmune condition, obviously, which is, you know, you want to make sure in any situation where you have autoimmune disease, if you have one, it Opens the door for other ones. It's like opening Pandora's box, basically. So you need to get that autoimmune condition into remission. So for celiac disease, the part of the body that's attacked is the small intestine, the villi and the small intestine. For Hashimoto's it's the thyroid. Right. For lupus, it's different areas in your body that, that have synovial fluid and in your joints and things like that, Rheumatoid arthritis or rheumatoid arthritis for your joints, you're going to have issues if you don't put those things into remission. Right. So going on an anti inflammatory diet, removing the foods that contribute to inflammation, those are going to be a super important starting place. Gluten is one of those inflammatory foods. If you have an autoimmune condition, dairy is one of those inflammatory foods. As you're starting out, you know, and there's a whole list of them that you want to make sure you're not incorporating as you're trying to put this autoimmune disease into remission. And at the same time, usually there are some other health issues that people are trying to address too. So you want to work with people that understand kind of your health history, know how to assess where you're currently at and how to help move you along in a way that gets you to the health that you need to be at.

Okay, so you were going to talk about strengths, training.

Yeah, let's talk about exercise for a second because that is, that's really, really important. So exercise, it plays a really, really important role in your bone health. So you need two different types of stimuli for your bones. You need muscle pulling on bone and you need impact. The most effective interventions are going to use one or both in combination. Okay, so what happens is you've got muscle pulls on bone to make them stronger. You've got the mechanical signal that sends a chemical signal to tell that bone to become stronger. Then you've got the impact Exercise. And there are different types of exercise. Usually people are told, hey, just go for a walk, that's going to be enough. I'm going to tell you right now, walking alone is not enough. To understand is that if you have, it could help you maintain your bone density if you don't have an underlying root cause still contributing bone loss. But you're not going to build bone density just by walking. So not to say you shouldn't do it, but you got to do some other stuff too. So what's the other stuff then? You would want to include also muscle and strength training as well. Okay. And that's, that's really, really big. And that involves your muscles working against an opposing force. So that could be a dumbbell, a heavy resistance band, your own body weight. What matters most is the intensity of that. So, you know, being able to do the rep range that studies show are most effective are the ones in the 5 to 10 repetition range intensity. So that's important. If you're not familiar with how to lift, I would get somebody who knows how and have them evaluate your body mechanics first before you go watch a video on YouTube on how to deadlift and squat. Okay. So that way you start with a good foundation and you can progress from there. So we don't have an injury as you're getting into those higher intensity rep ranges. Okay. So that's with strength and muscle training. And then there's also your non weight bearing exercise. That is not going to be helpful for bones cycling. If you're like paddling in a canoe or a kayak, swimming and water therapy, those are not bearing weight. When you're bearing weight, what does that mean? It means your body is working against gravity to keep you upright. There are going to be activities that you're doing on your feet and that's going to place that good stress on your bones. When you're in a pool, it's kind of like astronauts in space, right? You're not getting that stress on your bones. That's why astronauts can have a decrease in their bone density. You don't have that force on your bones. Same thing in a pool.

And same thing for people who are paraplegic, who, who can't bear weight and they start to develop osteoporosis.

And you have to figure out like you have to. And I'm not saying don't ever cycle, right? Or I'm not saying don't ever go for a kayak. I love kayaking. Absolutely love it. Getting out on the water and stuff like that, Swimming, right? Not saying don't ever do it. If you love it and it makes you happy and it brings joy to your life and you know, it reduces your stress and that's huge. That's a huge thing. Don't do it every single day or don't do it for extended periods of time and make sure you add something else in. Right? You don't have to, you don't have to completely eliminate those things. Just make sure you don't overdo it.

What kind of the Weight bearing exercise.

Do you recommend for weight bearing exercise? Walking is great, but you can also do, you can do running, jogging, hiking, dancing, gardening, playing tennis, you know, other sports, maybe it's high impact aerobics, jumping, rope, climbing, stairs, playing soccer, you know, whatever those are, you can do those things. Ok. The resistance training, you still have to add more of that weight though too. You still have to add more of that weight and be in those higher intensity rep ranges too.

That's really interesting. What about people who are just doing weight bearing exercises without doing the strength training or resistance training? What happens to their bone density?

You could possibly maintain, but you're not going to have improvements. And if, if we're talking about, you know, osteopenia and osteoporosis and you're already at that point, you need to be including resistance training. You got to be including resistance training. You just have to do it safely.

So you have designed this three step process. So I assume you've already gone over them. But what is this specific, you know, the, you know, the, the overview of the three steps?

Absolutely. So basically if someone were to come to me and say, hey, help me with a stronger bones plan, what does that look like? You have to first identify and address root cause issues contributing to bone loss. Don't make assumptions. Okay? We want, we want objective information, right? I know you can appreciate objective information. So that's the first one, right. You have to have objective information first. The second one is nourish. That's the second step. And it's kind of what I was talking about when we were talking about diet. The importance of diet and digestion and absorbing those nutrients and making sure those nutrients are making it to the cell level. That's a big focus in that part of the process. And the third part of the process is you have to reduce your stress, you have to improve your sleep. You got to get the right exercise plan in place where you're doing that weight bearing activity. But you also have the strength and resistance training, but you're doing those things in a way, especially if you already have low bone density, that you're doing those things in a way that's going to prevent fracture and injury, not just now, but in the future too. So you build the foundation for the future right now, if that kind of makes sense. And then you do the. We, you know, you got to get the hormone optimization. Right.

So for women who have osteoporosis, you would recommend that they go on hormone replacement therapy.

It depends on the person's situation too, right? And sitting here on this. On. On this podcast, I would never just say, yes, everybody, you know, blanket statement should be on bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. But I definitely think it's an important consideration for many, many women out there. But it just depends on that person's situation as well. And one of the things that we do is we have specific team members that evaluate and look at if that would even make sense for a specific person or not, because sometimes it doesn't make sense.

So you have a team to help people with bone density issues.

Yeah, so we. We have that process that I just walked through, and that process is inside of different coaching programs. And those coaching programs are led by. We have a team of about 14 people. Many of them are highly credentialed experts in their fields. Our programs and process were just featured in Forbes, which is great. And, you know, we've helped people in over 1500 cities around the world at this point improve their health, improve their bones and that. We've got a pretty rapidly growing community of people that are really excited, you know, to get the right plan in place. And really, our focus is making sure that you can have stronger bones and an active future with the people you love most. That's. That's really what I care about the most.

Well, that's really impressive. So you built such a huge community and all came from your own personal struggles. Right? That's. You know, you never know what. What was given to you, what the purpose was.

Yeah. And I mean, we've. We're to the point now where we have medical doctors and different physicians that refer their patients to us and that, you know, they've even actually gone through the program themselves in many cases. So it's. It's good to know that we don't have to have this adversarial relationship with the medical community. Like, if you want a natural approach or a conventional approach, we don't have to go head to head all the time. I think there is some common ground to be made and to be found there. And I'm really focused on bridging that gap, because what I want is when that patient is diagnosed with osteopenia or osteoporosis, and they say, you know what, Doctor, I'm not saying no to the medication. I'm just saying, not yet. Can you give me a year? And if they say, yeah, let's. Let's give you a year, I want them to say, go to bone coach. Right. Because give it a shot. Because you may not. There's a good Chance you don't need the medication. Right. There's a really good chance you don't need it. So that's what we have to help you figure out is does that even make sense? If you can address all the other issues that you have to address first, that's great.

I hope all the doctors know that you guys are there, you're able to help the patients.

Well, we give them resources from the program. Like when they come in, we give them like, you know, lab testing guides and communication templates and copy and paste messages for their portal to make communication easy. And we've actually had clients of ours tell us that they've sat down with their physicians and figured out the root cause issues of their bone loss with the tools and the resources that we've given them, which is really awesome.

Great. So. So you're indirectly through the patient, are teaching the doctor.

Yeah. Cause sometimes, usually what happens is, and I'm sure you've probably experienced this a lot of times patients want to self educate themselves. They want to know the information so they'll go on Google. The problem with Google searches is that you can find a different result for the same search. And then you take that information, you go and you ask for things from your doctor and it may not even be the right things. And eventually you may not actually get all the things that you need to get done, like testing. And you may not ever find out the root cause issues.

The medical community's approach, you mentioned that it hasn't been very helpful. The results has not been very encouraging. I think that happens to most chronic illnesses. It's not just osteoporosis.

Chronic conditions need more than acute solutions. I always say that our medical system is set up really, really well to address acute care, trauma care, we are fantastic at that. Chronic conditions, not so much. Osteoporosis is a chronic condition. It doesn't happen overnight.

So how successful is your program at helping patients?

Great question. Like for example, our programs are three and six months long usually. So for anybody who understands bone density testing and bone density results, you're not going to see improvements in a bone density scan in a three months or six month period. And that's why bone density scans are done every one, one and a half, two years down the road. Because otherwise you're within that margin of error of a bone density scan. So your improvements are not going to be statistically significant at that point. But what you can do is look at those bone turnover markers. You can look at the activity level of cells that are building up and breaking down bone and you can start to get an idea of what the potential outcome can be in the future. And if you're addressing all of the leading indicators that give you the best shot of improvement, the diet, digestion, absorption, root causes, sleep, stress, hormones, exercise, all those things, those are your leading indicators. If you go through and address all those things, you don't miss things, your lagging indicator, which is a DEXA scan, has a much, much better shot at being favorable for you in the future. And we've had people our program as of the time of this podcast recording, but it'll be longer than that for whoever is listening to it, has been running over two years now in its current format. And we've had plenty of people come back with having improved their bone density, improving their bone strength, stabilize their bone loss. That's huge. Even if you're not improving, if you could stabilize and not lose more, that's great. It's really, really great. So, and then also if somebody's fracturing when they come to us, preventing additional fracture and injury, those are, those are all huge wins for us.

So are there any, anything immediately someone can do to enhance their bone health? Any supplements and I know healthy anti inflammatory diet probably is really important. And then you know, do some exercise, both strength and impact training. Any, any, any other things that you recommend to people?

Frequently anti inflammatory diet is super important. Some specific foods that could go really well in there. One of my favorites is actually arugula. I'm not sure if you know, a lot of people eat a lot of spinach and there's, I don't like vilifying, you know, specific foods because I think you can still eat and consume these foods. But arugula is, it's a leafy green, same cruciferous family of vegetables as broccoli and kale. Great source of potassium, folate, vitamin K, vitamin C and bioavailable calcium. So if you've got up 3 ounces or 85 grams of arugula, which can actually, if you're sauteing it lightly, it kind of gets to a small portion on your plate that's got about 200 milligrams of bioavailable calcium, which is fantastic, that's plant calcium. But what's the reason why I mentioned spinach is unlike spinach, which is a common green a lot of people use, arugula is low in oxalates and oxalates are an anti nutrient that can bind up bone healthy minerals like calcium and prevent their absorption. And if you've got digestive issues or kidney stones or arthritis or joint pain. Those may be some indicators. You may have a hard time breaking down and degrading that oxalate. So you can swap that spinach, right, for arugula. That could be a good swap. And then I, I love vitamin C rich foods also. Vitamin C is, I think most people know vitamin C has a lot of health benefits to it by now. Helps blood pressure, heart disease risk out iron deficiency, memory, cognition. But for bones, specifically, it. Vitamin C is helping form blood vessels, cartilage, muscle and even collagen and bones. So it's super, super important. If you remember, bones are made up of this collagen protein matrix upon which minerals are laid. So what vitamin C is doing is it's stimulating pro collagen, it's enhancing collagen synthesis and it's stimulating alkaline phosphatase activity which is a marker for osteoblast bone building cell formation, which is pretty freaking cool. So that's, that's really neat. And you can find vitamin C in, you know, citrus fruits and berries and kakadu, plums and acerola cherries and you know, there are plenty of sources of vitamin C rich foods, but then also vitamin C rich vegetables too. So that, those are, those are just a couple ones that I really like and they're easy additions to make too. There are plenty more, plenty more to add. It's not just eat arugula and vitamin C rich foods. There are plenty of other things to include, especially protein. Protein is so important for your bones. Your bones, they're 50% protein by volume. So you need, you know, a constant supply of amino acids for, for your, your bones. Yeah, that's, that's super.

I think there's a little bit of debate of how much protein you need. Some people advocate, you know, up to 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight.

2 grams, 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight?

Well, up to, I think there's some people that advocate really high protein intake.

I was going to say that that would be really high.

Okay, up to 2 grams maybe per, per kilo. But I think there's some, some people are advocating pretty, yeah, pretty high intake. What, what is an ideal intake like.

In your, in your opinion?.5, 4, 5 grams of protein per pound of body weight, approximately. That's like the minimum that you would want to be getting. And that was based off of some research that was done that showed when people were, when, when they were combining protein and calcium, it was actually having A better effect on bone than it was with just calcium and vitamin D. Protein is super, super important for bone health. So and what's happening is it's not like when you're losing bone, you're not just. It's not like the osteoclasts are selectively like plucking calcium out of your bones and, you know, flushing it out of your system. It's actually tearing down the structure, so it's tearing down the protein that has the minerals with it. So you have to have that to rebuild that structure too.

So what about supplements? Any, any recommendation of supplements or you think that food should, should be able to do it?

Well, ideally, ideally first you're getting as much of, as much of your nutrition from your food first. Right. That would be ideally what we would do. And then, then you would go and you'd look at other important nutrients that you'd want to include. Vitamin D, super important for your bone health. Helps with intestinal absorption of calcium and a lot of other health, health benefits to that as well. Vitamin K. There are different types of vitamin K. Vitamin K2 specifically is. It helps make sure that calcium makes its way to where it's supposed to go, which is inside the bone and not your soft tissues like your, your kidneys and your arteries and things like that. Omega threes. Omega 3s are really important because they're the dampeners of inflammation. Inflammation contributes to bone breakdown. So that's, that could be really helpful. Amino acids. Amino acids are really important. Those are your building blocks of protein. Um, yeah. Calcium, magnesium, there are plenty of other minerals and nutrients that, that kind of go along in that bone health picture. But those are, those are some of the general, most important ones as you're kind of starting out too.

Yeah, fantastic. Yeah. So if people want to work with you guys to improve their bone health and where should they look for you.

Can always find me over@bonecoach.com we've got some awesome free resources over there too. Uh, Joy, what I'll do for your audience is I've got a free Stronger Bones masterclass as well that walks people through. It's like a 50 minute masterclass jam packed with awesome information and we can add that to the show notes if you want and your audience can grab that, watch it. Super easy and it's going to provide a lot of great information for them too.

That's fantastic. Yeah, thank you for your work in this area. You know, helping so many people and bring to light, you know, in this, I don't think people talk about Bones enough. I don't think the medical community really pays much attention to it, frankly.

They don't? No, they don't. It doesn't get enough attention. But it is, it's getting more attention now.

Uh huh. Thanks to you, partially.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Well, thanks so much for me having. Having me again, Joy. I really appreciate it.

It's been a delight. And thank you for sharing your knowledge and, and your own story. So if you watch this far, please like the video, subscribe to the channel so you don't miss any of these wonderful contents, you know, from these fabulous health, you know, pioneers.