Here is the dietary advice that I can give to people to strengthen their bones and joints. It is particularly good for those who has aches & pains in the joints or even feel in the bones. This dietary advice is also good for those people who suffer from osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.

Dietary Advice for strengthening bones and joints:

1. Eat Vitamin D rich food such as oily fish, salmon, mackerel, sardines and etc. For vegetarian or Vegans, eat fortified vintamin D cereals daily and eat sweet potato daily for vegetarians and vegans or take vitamin D supplement. Apart from this, expose to the sun 1/2 hr daily since the sun helps our body produce vitamin D.

2. Eat vitamin B12 rich food, such as meat, fish, egg, dairy products like milk and cheese. For vegetarian & Vegans, eat Multivitamin fortified cereals with an apple in the morning; eat spinach, red beetroot, various potatoes, butternut squash,various mushrooms, and eat banana, orange, blueberry during the day. Once the vitamin B12 is low, one can also take the Vitamin B12 supplement for awhile as well.

3. Eat protein rich food with your daily meals. For example, eat 1 or 2 eggs as part of your morning breakfast, eat chicken breast with other vegetables and cards for lunch, then steamed fish as one part of your dinner etc. Don’t forget to drink a glass of hot milk 1hour before bed. For vegetarian and vegan, the morning breakfast should contain various nuts & seeds, together with oats and soy milk; for the rest two meals, one can eat e.g. soybeans, Natto, Tofu, lentils and all the other legumes since they are full of protein. Of course, some vegetables also contains proteins, like sweet corn, asparagus, fresh admama beans, and dark green vegetables etc. Don’t forget to drink a glass of hot soybean milk 30mins or 45mins before bed.

4. Vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 can boost heart function, it also helps regulating blood sugar level in the body. What is more important about vitamin K (K2), is that it improves bone density, therefore, it can reduce the risk of bone fracture.

Food contains Vitamin K2 are in lean meat, liver & cheese. However, those fermented foods such as Natto, Komchi and sauerkraut contain more vitamin K2. The dark green leafy vegetables also contain certain amount of vitamin K2.

5. Magnesium rich Food. Why do we need to eat magnesium rich food? Because magnesium helps maintain heart function, kidney function, body metabolic function like those biochemical reactions between calcium, zinc, potassium etc, it also helps blood sugar regulation and it promotes bone health and prevent bone loss, it regulates protein systhesis, muscle and nerve functions. Magnesium is required for body’s internal energy production. It is therefore an essential part of our daily Dietary requirement.

Magnesium rich food includes: All the whole grains, legumes and dark green leafy vegetables also as spinach, kale etc. All the nuts and seeds. It is good to know that dark chocolate is very rich in Magnesium.

6. Apart from previous 5 parts of dietary advice. Now, we need to know the importance of exposure to sunlight. After we expose to sunlight, our body will produce vitamin D internally, which helps calcium absorption for stronger bones. Vitamin D has immunomodulatory effects and therefore, it can improve the immune system in our body. And it will also increase energy in the body and maintain the brain function and improve our mental health.

Finally, but not least, we need to exercise daily to maintain healthy bones, joints and stronger muscles for good health & Well-being.

This series of Dietary Advice for strengthening bones, joints and muscles is written by TCM doctor, Rachel Fang
MB BSc Chinese Medicine
Beijing, China
London, the UK