In chronic diseases such as osteoporosis, which thins and weakens bones, there is a great opportunity to do primary prevention from birth to thirty years, where all humans form the highest quantity and quality of bone, explains Dr. Víctor Manuel Mercado, ex President of the Mexican Association of Bone and Mineral Metabolism.
Within the framework of World Osteoporosis Day (October 20), the specialist gives us recommendations to take care of our bones: We protect ourselves by doing physical activity, exercise, avoiding smoking and drinking alcohol for more than three drinks a day, avoiding saturated fats , junk food, excess salt in food and products that contain oxalates, since they block the absorption of vitamin D and calcium, one of the best known is chocolate, spinach and green things, these are not that they are not eaten, but they should be consumed outside of foods rich in calcium; that is, do not combine any of this with milk, for example.
“With all these actions, and up to the age of 30, we make the highest quantity and quality of bone, until here comes primary care. From that age, men and women are going to maintain bone mass in the best possible way by doing the same thing that was done from 0 to 30 ”, says the specialist.
Help bone absorption
Another basic point, explains Dr. Mercado, is exposure to the sun and the absorption of vitamin D through the skin, which offers us the greatest contribution, although it is also obtained from food, this is in lesser quantity, for what would have to take an amount similar to 20 eggs a day to obtain the adequate amount of vitamin in the yolk, for example.
Vitamin D also helps to fix calcium, and although in Mexico we have good levels in foods with calcium, as we grow older, even if we eat the same amount of calcium, our intestines absorb less and less.
The mechanism of vitamin D is to maintain adequate levels of calcium absorption at the intestinal level and calcium reabsorption at the kidney level, if we have vitamin D deficiency, on the one hand we will not absorb adequate calcium in the intestines and we will lose more calcium through urine.
It also has regulatory functions in parathormone, a hormone that is produced in the parathyroid glands, this regulates the amount of bone that has to be reabsorbed or destroyed to release calcium into the blood.
The specialist emphasized that from the age of 50, especially in women due to the lack of hormones, there is a greater loss of bone, so in addition to doing all of the above, the use of vitamin should be increased D and calcium consumption, in some cases hormonal treatment that has a lot to do with bone resorption.
Mercado concludes that on the subject of osteoporosis there is no way to reverse it, but there is to stop it, what has already been lost in bone mass and quality is not recovered, “that is just the problem”, so talking about primary actions will always be the Better option. Today, in addition, there are many vitamin D supplements in different doses, which are supplied depending on the state of health and age, to know this requires a study of 25-hydroxy vitamin D.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx