Eat for Your Bones

If you're already been diagnosed with osteoporosis, don't panic - it doesn't mean that you'll have to miss out on most of the fun parts of your life, it simply means that you will have to pay extra attention to what you eat, and when you eat it.

The best moment in the day for an extra dose of calcium and vitamin D (the vital nutrients your bones need to function properly) is breakfast, and luckily, some of the most bone-friendly foods and beverages (some of them fortified with calcium) are the kind of things that we usually eat in the morning: milk, orange juice and cereal.

Our bodies need up to 1,500 milligrams of calcium a day - however, it's no good if we eat it all at once, since our bodies can only absorb 500 mg at a time. This means that our daily calcium intake starts in the morning, but must be carried out throughout the day, and if what we get from food is not enough, then we can add a calcium supplement to our diets to make up for the difference.

Most breakfast cereals for example are rich in calcium, so we don't have to go to great lengths to find a suitable brand that provides us with the amount of calcium we need. Make sure to read labels carefully, and have fun mixing and matching various flavors.

A bowl of fortified cereal with milk and a glass of calcium-fortified orange juice can provide you with a high enough dose of calcium. Also, don't forget your vitamin D, which experts say we need to help our bodies actually absorb the calcium from all the foods we eat.

As we age, our skin - which is the body's natural vitamin D converter, with more than a little help from the sunlight - begins to require assistance in providing us with the amount of vitamin D and doctors say that if bone loss is a problem, we should ingest 800 up to 1,200 IU a day. "Vitamin D is a little bit easier to absorb, so you can usually get away with taking supplements once a day", one doctor tells WebMD. It's all about being careful and taking the right amount at the right time - and you'll be fine.