A Little Fat for Strong Bones!

Go Figure: Fat as a Body "Builder"

Conventional wisdom says that as you get older your bones get weaker and more brittle. Now, I don't know exactly what age-range constitutes "older" but as far as I'm concerned I'm perfectly willing to do whatever I need to do to slow the process down. I happen to like my bones very much -- I've grown quite attached to them over the years and personally speaking, I have too much to accomplish to get hampered by brittle bones.

So I was quite happy to learn that a recent study (published in the March edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (www.ajcn.org) pointed out that omega-3 polyunsaturated fats -- which up to now I thought was only something that benefited your cholesterol -- is actually something that helps the bones stay strong and fit.

In fact, according to AJCN.org "...omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid can help increase bone formation and reduce bone resorption..." That's good enough for me, now pass me some of that there Omega 3.

Without trying to get too technical, the human skeleton -- points out the medical site www.chiro.org-- is not static. Bone is a highly active metabolic tissue, continually changing throughout our lives. This change - known as "bone modeling" is associated with body growth in children, teenagers, and young adults, when 100 percent of their bone surface is active. Modeling adds length, width, and weight to bones and increases overall skeletal mass. Bone "remodeling", on the other hand, is the process of bone growth associated with maintaining a fixed adult bone mass. In remodeling, only about 20 percent of the bone surface is active. Older bone tissue is destroyed (resorption) and replaced by new bone tissue (formation) in a cyclical process. In the case of osteoporosis, the basic problem is that resorption gets ahead of formation, resulting in a net bone loss.

To make the process even simpler: my 12 year old daughter is in the bone modeling stage. Her old man (that would be the guy writing this article) is in the remodeling stage. We both need strong bones, but how we go about it is a little bit different.