Navigating the nutritional needs for robust bones and muscles. This information is useful for any age, however it becomes more vital as we age, particular women to understand how to maintain healthy muscle and bone. This is what allows us to have strength, function and independence for as long as possible.
I discuss the synergy of vitamin D and vitamin K2, crucial for calcium absorption and averting unwanted calcium deposits elsewhere in our bodies. We've all heard about calcium, however it is only part of the story. On its own, calcium may even do more harm than good. Learn about the often overlooked nutrient that is required for healthy bone and muscle.
Finally, what does your digestive health have do do with bone and muscle health?
Learn more about Love Your Gut online program here: https://informedhealth.com.au/love-your-gut
Navigating the nutritional needs for robust bones and muscles. This information is useful for any age, however it becomes more vital as we age, particular women to understand how to maintain healthy muscle and bone. This is what allows us to have strength, function and independence for as long as possible.
I discuss the synergy of vitamin D and vitamin K2, crucial for calcium absorption and averting unwanted calcium deposits elsewhere in our bodies. We've all heard about calcium, however it is only part of the story. On its own, calcium may even do more harm than good. Learn about the often overlooked nutrient that is required for healthy bone and muscle.
Finally, what does your digestive health have do do with bone and muscle health?
Learn more about Love Your Gut online program here: https://informedhealth.com.au/love-your-gut
Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection Podcast with Fiona Kane. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. Today, what I would like to talk about is I would like to talk a little bit about bone health, bone health and muscle health. Actually, I think they're really important topics in general, but they are particularly important topics for ladies like me of a certain age who may be going through peri-menopause or menopause or they might be postmenopausal. Really, it's important in particular for ladies to understand this, although this is actually important for everyone, because everyone has muscle and bone and muscle and bone are really important. So everyone needs to hear this, but particularly those ladies. We need to understand the importance of maintaining these muscle and bone.
Fiona Kane:
So, in regards to bone, people often get confused. I think we don't see bone as a living thing. We see it as just something that's a bunch of calcium that's formed into a bone and it's just there, right, and we don't realize that. No, it actually breaks down and you make new bone and you lose bone and you make new bone and it's an active living thing and inside of your bones actually, you make blood cells, you make immune cells and those kinds of things, so it's quite active. Inside of your bone. There's a whole factories inside of your bone making other things, and also your body's continually making new bone, breaking it down, making new bone. But there's a few things that you need to know in regards to making bone. So the first is that you actually do need to do exercise to be able to make new bone. So if you're not doing any weight-bearing exercise, if you're not using your body, your body won't even trigger the process of making new bone. So a lot of it actually comes from moving your body. That's how you make the new bone and it is really important. This process, the whole process happens that you don't just break it down, but you make new stuff, and for a lot of people, they seem to be breaking it down but not making the new bone, and or, if they're making the new bone, they're not making quality bone.
Fiona Kane:
So, first of all, exercise is an important part of this and you will need to. If you have challenges around this, you will need to talk to the appropriate person whether it's an exercise physiologist or your physio or your doctor or whoever it is a personal trainer, whoever the right person is for you about how you overcome that issue in regards to exercise, because we do need to move our bodies one way or the other. That needs to happen to maintain and build healthy bone and muscle. So please get advice around that for yourself. For many people, the solution to a lot of issues like if you've got arthritis and those other issues is to get into a pool. So if you're doing swimming or just pool walking or get in a pool with a pool noodle and kick your legs and all those kinds of things again get the advice from someone who knows what they're talking about in regards to exercise, which is not me. But yes, moving your body is vitally important for having healthy muscle and healthy bone.
Fiona Kane:
Moving your body is vitally important for having healthy muscle and healthy bone. And so one is because I just said there that you need to move your body for your bone to start to develop, for you to start to make new bone, but also, from an exercise point of view, for your muscles to grow. They kind of break down and they build up, and they break down and they build up. So when you do exercise like if you do a workout and you haven't done one for a while and you kind of have that soreness that you get after, that muscle soreness. That's actually really normal, and the muscles are sore because you've literally torn some of those muscles, not in a bad way like as in a tear where you've hurt yourself, but those little micro tears happen in your muscle and then what happens is, as it heals, it grows like it gets bigger, and then over and over and over again, it heals and gets bigger and heals and gets bigger, and so you're building more muscle and bigger muscle. And so it's really really important to move your body for that muscle growth and for that bone growth, and it's vitally important for so many reasons.
Fiona Kane:
But if you think about it, especially in regards to something I think about which is aging, because I'm 52, I think about being functional and being independent and hopefully having both of those for as long as I live or as long as possible and so if you've got, if you've got plenty of muscle and so you're quite stable and you're able to say, stay stable and not have many falls, and and also if you've got the strong bones so you're not likely to break the bone, well that's perfect. But if you have a lot of issues with stability and you don't have a muscle to hold yourself up or to lower yourself onto a chair or whatever it is, then you're at a real high risk of, if you fall, hurting yourself. And then if you don't have strong bone, there's a high risk that you're really going to hurt yourself even more. So the older we get, the more and more important it is that we have this strong muscle and strong bone. Now I've talked about it many times before, but protein is vital for both of these. So protein is when you sort of have those micro tears, when you have those micro tears in your muscle and then they build up again and you make more muscle, well what happens is you actually use protein to make that muscle. So protein is vitally important to make that muscle. So it's the exercise and the protein combined that allow you to build that muscle. But protein is also used in our bones, that sort of collagen, protein matrix that holds your bone together. That kind of gives it the whole structure that comes from protein. So you need protein which is why I talk about protein foods so much to make that bone and that muscle.
Fiona Kane:
So everyone hears about calcium and calcium is important for making bone. But I think that many of us think that bone's just made from calcium, or some of us might have heard that vitamin D is important, but we don't realize that it's actually calcium, it's vitamin D and it's protein and it's many other nutrients as well. So I'm just going to talk about some of those nutrients now, because it is important to know there's many important nutrients. So your bone is actually made from sulfur, boron, silica, chromium, phosphorus, potassium, manganese, iron, vitamin D, magnesium, and I think I might have missed one or two there, but you can tell there's a lot of nutrients required to make healthy bone and they're important in different ways. Some of them are the structure of the bone and some of them are about getting certain nutrients into the bone. So, for example, a lot of people now they do know that vitamin D is associated with bone and it is.
Fiona Kane:
And vitamin D is associated for a few reasons, and vitamin D is really important for our immune system as well and our brain function and our hormones. But vitamin D also what it does is is it plays a part in those healthy, functioning muscles. So you use vitamin D in your muscles, which is part of reducing that risk of falling. If you've got good muscle, you're going to have that balance and hold yourself up and you're less likely to fall. But also vitamin D is involved in getting that calcium into your bones.
Fiona Kane:
So there's a few ways that your calcium ends up getting into your bones. So there's a few ways that your calcium ends up getting into your bones. So one is you've got vitamin D, and you'll get vitamin D from things like your oily fish, cod, liver oils, that kind of thing, or from things like your egg yolks, right? So you've got your vitamin D. And or you'll get it from the sun, and with the sun it's the cholesterol under your skin that will help draw that vitamin D into your skin. And then essentially what happens is you've got those saturated fats and the vitamin D and the calcium and the vitamin K2 that kind of all go into the bone. Sort of allow that calcium to get into the bone and that vitamin D to get into the bone. That sort of allow that calcium to get into the bone and that vitamin D to get into the bone. So they all work together essentially, and so that's also really important as well. So people will take vitamin D and calcium. However, you need K2, vitamin K2 to get that nutrition into your bone.
Fiona Kane:
Otherwise what can happen is you can end up having calcium deposits build up in other places in your body, so you might have them build up in your kidneys or in your arteries or somewhere else, and that can start to cause problems, because calcium deposits just hanging around where they shouldn't be not a good thing. We do need a certain level of blood calcium and your body has a certain level of calcium and magnesium and all these different things that have many roles in the body. However, what we want to do is make sure that much of your dietary calcium certainly does get into your bone and it's not swimming around too much of it and causing other health problems. So calcium is really important, but it needs to get into the bone. So if you're just taking a calcium only supplement, I would advise you to make an appointment with someone like me, a nutritionist like me I work online and in person in the hawksbury or some sort of medical professional to support you in what to take, because just taking calcium on its own is not a good idea.
Fiona Kane:
However, just get the right advice. Don't just stop taking things. Go and get the advice around it of what is right for you. Also, what you will need to take into account is things like if you're on medications, particularly if you're on something like Warfarin, you can't take vitamin K. So don't just go to the supermarket and get vitamins. Get advice from someone who knows what they're talking about, about what is right for you, and I generally advise my clients take a mixture of a lot of those minerals and not just calcium, and you might be on something like K2. You might have your vitamin D. You have your good fats in your diet as well to help you absorb all of this.
Fiona Kane:
You're moving your body, so you're building that muscle and you're building that bone. There's lots of components to having sort of strong muscle and strong bone. So it is just important to understand there's a balance of all those things. You need to take into account all of that. It's not just as simple as, oh, take calcium, that sorts it out. It's just not as simple as that. Our bodies aren't simple like that, our bodies. There's a whole bunch of biochemistry going on inside of your body and your body's using lots of different nutrients to make all of these things happen. So it's just important to understand it's not as simple as go to the supermarket, take calcium, and if that's what you're doing, I would advise you to get further advice around that, so that the calcium is going where it should be going, doing what it should be doing, and you're getting the right support around that, because calcium can cause problems.
Fiona Kane:
So you might need it, but it can also cause problems, and this is where, also again going back to the protein thing, I cannot emphasize enough how important protein is. It's also what your neurotransmitters are made from in your brain, so your serotonin and your melatonin and your dopamine and GABA and all of these different neurotransmitters in your brain. They're made from protein, so it's vitally important. I personally think that animal protein is the best absorbed, the easiest to use, but any protein just make sure you're having protein, but I would highly advise that you go for those proteins, or at least some of those, even if you're just prepared to have some yogurt or some eggs or something like that.
Fiona Kane:
And the other thing, though, too and we've talked about, I've talked about this before, but it's worth mentioning again is that for all of this to happen, not only do you need to have, you need moving your body, you need to have all of those right nutrients available to you, but you also actually need to absorb those nutrients. So nutrition is not only about what you eat, but it's also about making sure you absorb those nutrients, and so it's important to address all of the things that might cause a problem with absorbing those nutrients. So it could be that the way you eat and I've talked about it before, about being relaxed when we eat, making sure our body is in rest and digest mode and not fight or flight mode when we eat so that's really important. It's also important to understand that maybe you are not making all of the right digestive enzymes. So if you're not, you will get a lot of reflux or you might get a lot of bloating or you might have things go straight through. So there's lots of different symptoms you might get if you're not making enough or the right digestive enzymes. So that's another thing as well, and being relaxed before you eat is part of that. But there's also certain nutrients you need to make those enzymes, so that there's lots of different factors in how our digestion works all the way through. That is really important for addressing whether or not you're absorbing and able to use your nutrients. So it's really important when you look at health that you look at it from that holistic point of view, from all different angles. So when you're looking at things like bone and muscle and these things that we require to maintain our independence and our functionality as we get older, or just in general throughout life, but definitely as we get older, it is really really important to understand. All of these things matter. So what you eat, how you eat it, how well your body is able to absorb, digest and use those nutrients, and there's all different steps along the way, and that's the sort of thing that in this episode, I will actually tell you about.
Fiona Kane:
We do have an online program called Love your Gut Program. So it is a six-week online program that we run a few times throughout the year, and that program actually helps you learn about how your gut works, what might cause all the different symptoms that you might be getting, whether it's IBS symptoms or whether it's reflux or whatever it is but there's so many different gut symptoms people have they don't understand where they come from. So basically, what we do is we teach you where they come from and what you can do about them, all the different natural things you can do about them. There's eating plans, there's recipes, there's all of that kind of stuff, and it's in an online, it's in a group. It's in a Facebook group, a private Facebook group, and essentially myself and Rebecca, the other nutritionist who works for me. We run this group together and support people to learn how to look after their gut and improve their gut symptoms. So if you feel like that would be beneficial to you, I will put the link in below. You could go to the website informedhealthcomau and find Love your Gut program. These are all things just to remind you as well that I do, we both do with individuals as well. So if you don't want to be part of a group program, you can certainly come and see us as individuals online, and also I'm available in the Hawkesbury area. So go to informedhealthcomau and I'll put in various links. So that's just that, because it's important that you know that I can help you if you need that help.
Fiona Kane:
So a summary of this is really to understand that bone is just not made from calcium. It's made from lots of things and it's important to get all of those nutrients, but it's also important to absorb all of those nutrients and the ability to do that will depend on, physically, what's going on with your body structurally, maybe if you've got any health issues or issues where there's a structural issue, something like if someone's got a hiatus hernia, which is the stomach pushing up through the esophagus, that will affect things. Also, what matters is how you eat and how relaxed you are. Also, it's important to understand that, like I said before, that exercise is an important part of this. Mindset is an important part of this actually learning how to be relaxed when we eat and learning how to manage our stress, because that will affect a lot of these things as well. So, understanding that things like bone and muscle health they are really vitally important overall for our body and for our health and it is important that you understand that there's lots of factors that will affect whether or not that you have healthy bone or whether or not you have healthy muscle.
Fiona Kane:
In Australia I think I was just looking at the statistics and it actually says here that osteoporosis, which is that disease that affects our bone and can make our bone really fragile it's 1.2 million people are estimated to have osteoporosis, 6.3 million with low bone density, and that's just in Australia and this problem gets worse for women well, for everyone actually as they age, but women in particular because we lose certain hormones. It gets worse. So there's an issue with that as well, and I realize I don't have my usual guys behind me here which is heart and brain, because I got them down for a separate reason, but I have got irritable bowel here with me. So that's the Awkward Yeti. The Awkward Yeti has some great bodily parts that you can use for teaching purposes and just for a bit of fun, but heart and brain I've been using them today. I'll give you a. There's a brain, and brain has a lot to do with your, your gut and your digestion as well. And there we've got heart with his little batman suit on. They're usually in the background behind me. I haven't put them back anyway.
Fiona Kane:
Please understand that, uh, that bone and muscle health are vital and it's important to have the right nutrients move your body, manage your stress and manage your digestion and gut issues. So if you need help with any of those things, you know where to find me informedhealthcomau and just understand that you really need to look at this broad amount, this broad nutrition, and that also includes if you go to my website, you'll also find a download for immune system health and a lot of what's in. There is pretty much the same advice I would give you for bone health most of it anyway in that, making sure you're having protein, making sure you're having lots of colorful vegetables and some fruit, things like nuts and seeds like tahini. Ground up sesame seeds are really high in calcium. Nuts and seeds are too. So are the bones and things like salmon.
Fiona Kane:
So if, like tinned salmon, I'm not telling you to eat fish bones that are going to get caught in your throat, but things like tinned salmon, the bone in that is not going to get caught in your throat and that bone has got great source of calcium right. And also things like I was saying before your cod liver oil, your oily fish, things like that where you're going to get things like your vitamin D and the good fats that you need, the good fats that you need. And, like I said before, eggs. So protein, animal products, eggs, nuts, seeds, all the colorful fruit and vegetables, olive oil, so essentially balanced diet with lots of different nutrients. All the different colors indicate lots of nutrients and moving your body as well.
Fiona Kane:
So if you need help, you know where to find me, but otherwise that's just a little clue about. It's not just about calcium. So please understand that your bone and your muscle are living things and they need support to function. Also, a little thing about muscle as well is that your muscle is very much involved in metabolizing glucose in your system. So if you have insulin resistance or any kind of, if you're starting to develop type 2 diabetes, that can relate a lot to your muscle as well.
Fiona Kane:
So it's really really vital that we focus on healthy muscle and healthy bone. So I hope that that was useful for you and I will talk to you again soon. And if you want to join our Love your Gut program, go to the website and see when this is coming out. We will have one starting the following week, but you may listen or watch this at another time. So please just check our website to see when the next program is running and I'll see you again. So hope you have a great week and please like, subscribe, share and all of that and follow, and I'll see you next week. Thanks, bye.
