Without your skeleton you’d be a puddle of lumpy, pulsating mush on the floor...

The emphasis placed on bone health in the media is rather exclusive to the needs of growing children. It is indeed paramount to nourish your children’s structural development, but the urge to support the skeleton should not stop at age 11. Osteoporosis – the thinning and eventual decline of the bone matrix – is a deadly condition and one of the most prevalent degenerative diseases in our modern world.

You can help protect yourself from this killer condition through your diet and lifestyle. Much like every organ in the body, the bones require a constant supply of specific nutrients in order to healthily function. If your diet is not providing sufficient bone nourishment, then the skeleton will begin its journey on a downward spiral to crumble-ville!

Your bones are living dynamic tissues which are constantly being broken down and rebuilt as a natural process. The trick to keeping a healthy functioning bone balance is to support the ‘rebuilding’ phase.

Calcium is the most famous bone nutrient. But it is by no means the only important one. Calcium is in fact no use to your bones without magnesium which transports it there. Boron, vitamin D, vitamin K, vitamin C and manganese are other essential components of the bone brigade...

If you have osteoporosis in your family, or if you already have thinning of the bone like millions dotted over the globe, it would be strongly advised to keep your body at an alkaline balanced pH. This is because when you eat acidifying foods such as meat, dairy and alcohol, your body leeches the bones of their calcium content in order to buffer the acidic environment. If you have ever heard that coffee is bad for your bones, this is due to its acidifying nature.

A good bone protecting measure would be to include many varieties of fresh vegetables in your diet such as kale, watercress, cabbage and broccoli. This is because these leaves are alkalinising agents in the body and packed with magnesium, vitamin K, vitamin C and calcium!

And as for milk... Yes it is packed with the bone’s BFF - calcium, but is comparatively low in magnesium, which means that much of that calcium will never arrive at its desired destination: the skeleton. Milk also has an acidifying effect on the pH of the body. So drinking lots of milk and eating lots of dairy could in fact have a detrimental effect on the bones. In fact, it is only in dairy eating cultures where the incidence of osteoporosis is so high...

Don't keep your skeleton in the cupboard and feed it what it really wants!