Three Simple Steps To Keep Your Bones Strong

–Get calcium from these foods first: Dark leafy greens; almonds; canned salmon or sardines; calcium-reinforced orange juice, cereals and soy milk. Notice, cow milk is not the best source, it is simply the most common source.

–Then add a 600-mg supplement. Your goal is 1,200 mg of calcium a day, half from food. One reason: This combo makes your bones stronger than just food or just supplements. Take your calcium with 1,000 IU of vitamin D-3 before age 60. Make that 1,600 mg of calcium (more from food) and 1,200 IU of D-3 after. Why D-3, not plain vitamin D? Because it’s the form your body uses best, and makes itself when sun hits skin. The calcium-D-3 combo cuts your fracture risk by an impressive 25 percent. Oh, take one more thing (this is it, we promise!): 400 mg of magnesium. It keeps calcium from constipating you. (remember the product “Milk of… Magnesia?  That was a marketing companies way of writing, “Magnesium”)

–Premenopausal women, start now. While you lose up to 20 percent of your bone density in the first five to seven years of menopause, thanks to the drop in estrogen, get serious sooner. Shifts in other hormones before menopause can erode bones fast. If you choose hormone replacement, make sure you add two baby aspirins, plus the calcium, magnesium and vitamin D-3.