You can take action to strengthen your bones and improve your bone health at any age. The two best things you can do are to eat foods rich in calcium and vitamin D, and to exercise. Eat low or nonfat milk or yogurt, green leafy vegetables, almonds and salmon. Regularly do weight-bearing exercise such as walking, running, jumping rope, or playing basketball.
Healthy Bones, Joints & Muscles
Good nutrition -- especially calcium and vitamin D -- is very important to healthy bones and muscles, as is regular exercise and keeping weight under control. This lifestyle is especially important in childhood and teen years, when bone strength is developing most rapidly -- and can help prevent osteoporosis (brittle bones), fractures, and painful osteoarthritis (degenerative joints) later in life.
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Maintaining a well rounded healthy diet and a healthy weight is good for bone health as well as health in general. Some dietary items that can contribute to weak bones include alcohol, caffeine, and carbonation. Being underweight can put you at risk for weak bones. Being overweight may encourage strong bones, however this is outweighed by the many other health risks associated with being overweight and obese. -
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Fitting knee braces is an art, and patients are typically measured to find the one that's just right.
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In a cast, your wrist is immobile, but you can still move your fingers. Your doctor may even start therapy before the cast is off.
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Ms. Ashley Koff, RD , Nutrition & Dietetics, answeredSee All 2 AnswersEvery year after age 25, our body's composition begins to shift quite dramatically. We gain, on average, about one pound of body weight each year and lose a third to a half pound of muscle. As a result, our resting metabolism decreases approximately 0.5 percent annually. So unless you downshift your caloric intake as your metabolism slows down, you'll experience frustrating weight gain, which can then inhibit optimal energy metabolism.
Although losing a fraction of muscle mass each year may seem minuscule, it adds up to be quite significant -- translating to about a 1 to 2 percent loss of strength each year. With this loss of muscle strength, we tend to spontaneously become less active because daily activities become more difficult and exhausting to perform. We, in effect, lose energy more easily just like an old car that hasn't been serviced in a while will use up more gas than a new, efficient model. -
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Some of the things you can do to have healthy bones and keep your body healthy include avoiding smoking, exercising and eating the right foods.
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See All 3 AnswersMuscles are supplied with oxygen at 3 times the amount when active as compared to at rest. Other ways in which muscles are supplied with oxygen include:
- Blood flow from the heart is increased
- Blood flow to your muscles in increased
- Blood flow from nonessential organs is transported to working muscles
These are only some of the many ways in which muscles are supplied with oxygen during exercise.
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Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center answeredSee All 3 AnswersMost of the time, popping in a joint indicates a tendon crossing over the joint.
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Dr. Michael Roizen, MD , Internal Medicine, answeredMuscle isn't just for football players, bouncers, and souped-up cars. Everyone benefits from adding some muscle to their body; in fact, adding some muscle will help lower your levels of blood sugar.
The more muscle you have, the more you increase insulin receptivity—that is, the process by which insulin transports glucose (sugar) into your cells. (Insulin is a hormone that regulates the amount of glucose in the blood.)
Furthermore, if you gain more muscle and lose weight, you change the chemistry of your cell membranes so that you can absorb glucose throughout your body, rather than having it stay in your blood. You add muscle by doing strength exercises. -
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Dr. Mehmet Oz, MD , Cardiology (Cardiovascular Disease), answeredSee All 2 AnswersFlexibility—that is, lengthening your muscles and giving them the ability to adapt to all kinds of situations—is important in the big bone picture. Stretching won't do anything to the physiology of your bones per se, but it will give you the ability to maneuver yourself during a fall or get yourself up after a fall. Oftentimes, people have the strength to get up after falling, but they don't have the flexibility to twist, turn, and wiggle their bodies when they're under chairs or behind toilets. (Only one-third of people with back fractures know they have them; stretch and strengthen your muscles for this reason as well.)