Is your gut the secret to anti-aging? 6 science-backed ways to boost your bone strength, muscle, and balance | Prof Elaine Dennison

Jonathan Wolf (0:02)

Welcome to ZOE Science & Nutrition, where world-leading scientists explain how their research can improve your health.

It might surprise you, but your skeleton isn't just a rigid frame. It's one of the busiest organs in your body. Bone is actually a living tissue that constantly rebuilds itself, communicates with other organs, and plays a vital role in immune health. It might not be as sexy as muscles, but bones are just as important. And whatever your age, there are things you can start doing today to help ensure that your bones support you for the long haul. Joining me today is Professor Elaine Dennison, Rheumatologist and Professor of Muscular Skeetal Epidemiology at the University of Southampton. She's a world-leading expert in bone health, why it goes wrong and how to protect it. Her research explores how our bones change throughout life and how best to protect our skeleton from childhood to old age. This episode isn't just about avoiding broken bones. It's about discovering one of the most remarkable and most overlooked living tissues in the human body. By the end of this episode, you'll think completely differently about your skeleton and you'll know exactly how to protect your bones so they can look after you.

Elaine, is bone health only something that older women should worry about?

Elaine Dennison (1:25)

No.

Jonathan Wolf (1:26)

Are my bones a non-living scaffolding, a bit like my fingernails whose only job is to stop my body from collapsing into jelly?

Elaine Dennison (1:34)

No.

Jonathan Wolf (1:36)

Can I tell that my bone health is declining without getting a scan?

Elaine Dennison (1:40)

No, not normally.

Jonathan Wolf (1:42)

Do stronger muscles make stronger bones?

Elaine Dennison (1:45)

Yes.

Jonathan Wolf (1:47)

To maintain good bone health, do you need to take expensive supplements?

Elaine Dennison (1:51)

No.

Jonathan Wolf (1:52)

Finally, what's the biggest mistake that most people make about bone health?

Elaine Dennison (1:57)

The one thing that I think is most important is not leaving things until later in life when you've got a problem, because protection is always easier than cure, isn't it?

Jonathan Wolf (2:06)

One of the things I'm struck by is on social media, there's an enormous amount of focus on building muscle, but you very rarely hear anything about bones. I was so confident that bones are just like my fingernails or my teeth, like really hard, but basically dead, and that they were just sort of there, like a coat hanger, the stuff hangs off it. Otherwise, I would end up like a puddle, like a slug.

But what I'm hearing from you is I've got this all wrong?

Elaine Dennison (2:35)

Bones do play an important protective role, so they do help protect internal organs, but they're definitely not a dead tissue, they're very much a living tissue. As we're sitting here, our bones are being constantly turned over, so bone is being broken down, bone is being formed, and in health, obviously, that's a balanced process, so the amount of bone that you break down, you replace, and it's a way of the body's DIY. If you think of, if you got a crack in a wall, you might want to put some polyfilarin to repair that, so your bones effectively should be doing the same thing.

Where we get into problems is where that becomes unbalanced, so more bone is broken down than is formed, and then obviously you lose bone, so that is a problem. Beyond that, bones do more than just protect organs. You've got cells, you've got bone marrow that's being active throughout your life, so you're making cells in your bones as well. It's a very, very active organ, but it's definitely a living thing, so there's absolutely a need to look after it.

Jonathan Wolf (3:44)

So I'm fascinated by this idea that I'm both breaking down my bones and rebuilding them.

Elaine Dennison (3:48)

Yeah.

Jonathan Wolf (3:49)

I can see why it would make sense to rebuild them if they're broken, but why on earth would my body be like breaking down my bones? That seems really stupid.

Elaine Dennison (3:59)

What would normally happen is that in a bone, you might get a tiny, tiny little crack or irregularity on the surface of the bone, like a microfracture, and what your body can do is work out where the bones need either repairing or strengthening.

So to do that, what it does is it sends some little cells in called osteoclasts that will make the area ready for repair, and then osteoblasts will come in and do the repair. So it should be a balance cycle where everything results in a sort of a net equal balance. But it is important because if you completely stop bone turnover and we've got drugs that would do that, then you can see little fractures appearing actually enlarge. So you can see that actually it's a very beneficial process to have bone turning over in this way.