Enhancing Bone Health at Every Age

**Andy Galpin** (0:00)
The science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play and life. Welcome to Perform. I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor and scientist and the executive director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University. Today, we're going to be talking about bone health. And I wanted to cover this for many reasons, but first and foremost is the fact that 50% of people out there, at some point in their life, will break a bone. And so we want to do our best to minimize that chance, that likelihood of us breaking our own bone. But then on top of that, somewhere between 5 and 10% of broken bones will not heal correctly. So after something has happened, we want to make sure that we're not in that 10% of people so that our bones heal correctly and as quickly as possible. Obviously, the more common and more frequent it is for us to break bones, the worse our health is going to be. Having them not heal correctly is going to lead to a whole host of other short and long term health problems. All right. So why do you care about this? Well, people tend to think about bone health and their mind, at least mine did initially, jumps to things like, well, this is only an issue for older people. And then really, this is an issue for older women for reasons I'll discuss here shortly. But that's not necessarily the full story here. There are special things we need to pay attention to, especially for post-mental-positive women. But the reality of it is, the prevalence of poor bone health is extraordinarily high across the globe in men and women, and it's rising at a rapid rate. There's some data that came out recently suggesting that in 2007, the prevalence of poor bone health here at least in America was around 9%.
And that has risen to close to 13%, again in the last decade alone. On top of all that is the fact that it is what we call a silent disease. So it is unlike things like obesity or metabolic issues, brain health, mental health, where you won't necessarily know what's happening. So part of the reason why bone health is so poor in so many people is because people have no idea. There are no signs, there are no symptoms. You don't feel it, you don't see it, you don't hear it until the bone breaks. So it's really common, it's increasing, and you probably don't have any idea that it's happening. On top of all that, it is extraordinarily preventable. So somewhere between 20 to 40% of your bone health is determined by your lifestyle. There are, of course, genetic components filling in the rest of the gap there, but you have a huge say. And the say is distributed across lots of different options. So that's the foundation of what we're going to cover today. And let's jump right into it. Today's episode is sponsored by Element. Element is an electrolyte drink mix that has an ideal electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium and magnesium, but no sugar. Hydration is critical to performance, both physical and mental performance. Countless studies have shown that even a slight degree of dehydration, even as small as 1%, can lead to decreases in physical output and mental performance. We also know that electrolytes are critical to proper hydration, which I've been harping on for years. But you can't do that, proper hydration, by only drinking water. You need to get the right amount of electrolytes in the right ratios, and that's why I'm a huge fan of Element. In fact, many of you will probably remember that I featured Element in my YouTube series on optimizing hydration nearly five years ago. I featured Element in these videos because their blend of a thousand milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium really is unique and different than any other electrolyte in the market, and it has great scientific support. I use Element constantly, particularly when I'm sweating a lot, and I routinely make it a part of my client's optimization programs. If you'd like to try Element, you can go to drinklmnt.com/perform to claim a free Element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix. Again, that's drinklmnt.com/perform to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also sponsored by David. David makes protein bars unlike any I have ever encountered. They have an amazing 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from that protein. This is 50% higher than the next closest protein bar. Honestly, it's the best tasting protein bar I've had by a mile. While I often talk about the importance of getting one gram of protein per pound of body weight for things like muscle health and recovery and the promotion of lean body mass and say, tidy, the reality is that for most people, getting that one gram of protein per pound of body weight is really challenging. However, David makes that easy. Their bars taste incredible and are each packed with 28 grams of protein. I eat one almost every day and always have two or three in my backpack when I'm traveling, like literally always. It probably sounds funny, but I eat them as dessert all the time. When you try them, you'll know exactly what I mean. The macronutrients one more time are 28 grams of protein, 150 calories and grams of sugar. If you're interested in trying these bars for yourself, you can go to davidprotein.com/perform.