No doubt you're well aware of how important it is to protect your bone health, especially as you age. And you're probably motivated to do it, too. Seeing those old people stooped over, unable to hold themselves upright, faces contorted with the effort, are difficult to forget.
You likely also know the important role that calcium plays. After all, bones are made from that important mineral (among others.) You might even be taking a calcium supplement, perhaps it was even recommended to you by a health professional. You might even have added some vitamin D as well.
But is that sufficient to protect you? Are calcium and vitamin D adequate to keep your bones healthy?
In a word, no. What's often missing is a crucial step that happens in bone formation before the step in which bones are mineralized with calcium. And just because it's one you rarely hear about, doesn't mean it's not important. In fact it's so important, that if you miss it, you will never have healthy bones, no matter how much calcium and vitamin D you pour into your body.
To understand why, it's important to know how bones are formed. In short, before the bones can use calcium to become hardened and strong, they have to have a connective tissue matrix. Then, once this matrix is made, vitamin K attaches itself to the cross links in the net, and only then does the calcium become attached.
Without that matrix, the mineralization process has no where to attach itself to. In fact, the relative strength of this net is why two people can have the same bone mineral density, but one suffers fractures and the other does not.
In short, connective tissue is the mother of bones.
How can you support the formation of a healthy connective tissue so it can form the strands and weave itself together so that bone minerals can deposit themselves?
Building a strong connective tissue matrix is supported through making certain it has the components necessary to assemble itself into the strands that later will hold bone deposits. Those strands are made up of the following components:
1. Protein.
2. Silicon
3. Manganese
4. Vitamin C
5. Vitamin E, and
6. Vitamin A.
Happily, a diet composed of whole organic foods with at least 30% of them raw, will supply these nutrients, so that supplementation is not routinely required.
But there's one more key ingredient to building healthy connective tissue, which is that the body needs to be 'instructed' to do it. Such commands are driven by hormones. Again, you might think you're 'covered' in that department if you are taking progesterone and estrogen, or if you know your blood test levels for those two hormones came back normal. Again, this is incorrect.
The 'orders' to build connective tissue are given by the hormone testosterone. Yes, testosterone in both men and women is the hormone that drives production of connective tissue.
Keep the six nutrients listed above coming in to your body in adequate amounts, and keep your testosterone levels normalized, and you will have the key ingredients necessary to build the connective tissue matrix that must be in place before you can harden bones with deposits of calcium, magnesium, phosphorus.
If you're concerned about your bone health, you're invited to get a free questionnaire so you can assess your own bone health. To do that, go to http://www.PerfectBones.com.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Pamela_Levin
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