Protecting your bone health is not just important but easy as well. Bones provide a proper structure to your body – helping to protect organs, anchor muscles, and store calcium. And so, it is easy to build strong and healthy bones while in your young age, so that when you become old, you do not suffer from debilitating conditions like arthritis.

Bone health should be on everyone’s radar, especially in midlife and beyond. Statistics say, that an estimated 10.2 million people older than 50 years of age have osteoporosis, and about 43.3 million more people have low bone mass, which puts them at high risk for arthritis.

According to doctors, most people reach their peak bone mass around age 30 years and after that, you keep losing more bone mass than you gain. And so, to prevent breakage and osteoporosis, do consider the following to strengthen your bone mass, as recommended by Dr. Paula Rackoff, a rheumatologist at NYU Langone. According to Dr. Rackoff, also a clinical associate professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, a few easy steps you can take to keep your bones strong for a lifetime, include:

Dr. Rackoff suggests incorporating calcium into your daily diet – mostly with the help of natural supplements like fruits and vegetables. For adults ages 19 to 50 years, the Recommended Dietary Allowance or RDA is 1,000 milligrams (mg) of calcium a day. The recommendation increases to 1,200 mg a day for women aged 51 years and older and for men aged 71 years and older.

The best sources of calcium include dairy products, almonds, broccoli, kale, canned salmon with bones, sardines, and soy products, such as tofu.

If you are at a high risk of osteoporosis and low bone mass, get a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry or DEXA scan – the gold standard for screening and diagnosis. According to Dr. Rackoff, it is a painless, low-dose X-ray, generally of the hip and spine which helps assess the mineral content of the bones and only takes about 20 minutes. “A DEXA scan provides a T score, which is compared with the average bone density in a young, healthy male or female adult of the same race or ethnicity,” she told the New York Post.

A bone density test is usually recommended for:

• Women 65 years and older
• Men 70 years and older
• Anyone who has broken a bone after 50 years

According to Dr. Rackoff, anyone who is at increased risk of falling should also have a bone density scan - those with Parkinson’s disease or other chronic conditions that affect your ability to be physically active.

It is important to be regular with your workouts and exercise – especially weight-bearing exercises like walking, jogging, and climbing stairs which help you build strong bones and slow bone loss. “The force exerted on bones during strength training stimulates bone-forming cells to build more bone, making bones denser and stronger,” said Dr. Rackoff.

According to the CDC guidelines, two strength-training sessions per week can help you maintain your bone density without medication.

To absorb the calcium, you take for your bones, your body needs vitamin D. According to the recommended guidelines, for adults ages 19-70 years, the RDA of vitamin D is 600 international units (IUs) a day.

Good natural sources of vitamin D include oily fish like salmon, trout, whitefish, and tuna. Additionally, mushrooms, eggs, and fortified foods, such as milk and cereals, are great ways to increase your vitamin D intake, apart from sitting in the sunlight for at least 20 minutes daily.

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