Understanding advice for dealing with osteoporosis and navigating info

I am looking at where I went wrong following the advice to exercise, eat well and take supplements. I did all of that - religiously for 9 months and I failed and in looking and how that could have happened I have been revising my actions and the advice I followed and what went wrong so I can correct it and hopefully help others. I am embarrassed to say that it was just not obvious to me.

I was told that walking is great for osteoporosis - so I did a lot of walking. Working up to 10k steps a day - But I am now learning that walking, just walking does not build bone density if it’s leisurely, even if for long duration. It has to be at a significant pace. And of course stair climbing and the elliptical but the heart rate has to rise to a particular level as well. Find out what that is for your body.

Weight bearing exercises - that is not enough. The exercises have to specially and safely address the spine and other bones and they have to be done properly or one loses the benefit of the exercise. I needed more of some exercises and fewer of the others and squats, for example, I was not doing them properly even though I had trainers watching me. My exercise physiologist helped me with proper form.

A wide variety of vegetables is recommended - but there are fruits, vegetables and nuts that are high in oxalates. If, like me, you have an issue with oxalates or are consistently eating a high oxalate diet - spinach, Swiss chard, rhubarb, almonds, prunes - like I was - day in and day out - oxalates bind to calcium and are excreted through urine.

I was eating copious amounts of rhubarb, Swiss chard, collards, sweet potatoes, almonds, almond flour in my crackers and foods. I thought I was eating calcium rich foods that were helping me but they were making me worse. Nobody told me this could be detrimental to my particular bone health.

I know look at not only calcium content but how high the oxalate content is. So I am actually absorbing the calcium intake in and it is going to my bones. It bears looking into this. My calcium oxalate level on the 24 hr urine test was 396. I brought it down to the normal level of 21 by changing my diet alone. No medication. However I had to be diligent and I am now navigating getting enough nutrients and calcium while regulating oxalates.

It’s not enough to “eat a lot of green leafy vegetables and have your plate look like a rainbow of colors”. Because many have high or moderately high oxalate content and either need to be boiled and the water drained in order to reduce the oxalate level, or avoided altogether depending on your situation. It’s important to read up on and understand how oxalates affect bone health and I had to figure this out the hard way because no one told me, not one doctor. Until it was a problem. With osteoporosis and bone health in general, I think this is a critical piece of information. I dont understand why this is not included in the general information.

The other part of the equation is our digestive system. I realized that if my digestive system was not absorbing nutrients properly, no matter how much or how nutrient dense my diet is, if my body is not absorbing and redirecting g these nutrients to the parts of my body that need it, the benefit is greatly reduced. The digestive system has to be healthy and able to absorb the nutrients you put into it. I thought just eating a pristine healthy diet would fix this but sometimes one needs a little more support in this area.

I wanted to mention this because for me, I realized that it was not enough to know what to do, and all I was told and all I read was what to do. I know now it has everything to do with how and to ask questions and when told I am making myself crazy (vs being given answers to my questions) to go elsewhere. I am learning to ask the how’s and the whys these things are happening and to research as much as I can instead of just following what I have been told to do, which is just not enough, at least for me and my body.

And I also believe that there is this assumption that everyone with osteoporosis is going to take medication so maybe it’s not important to know. And that the medication will just fix the bones. But it is important to know. So important, whether one takes meds or not, doctors and healthcare providers have to go a big step further to offer more than the status quo of walking, weight bearing exercise and eating leafy green vegetables, as do the sites that put out information on bone health.

This is what I am learning.