Dear Friends,
Today we’re going to be discussing bone health, and why taking a calcium supplement is not good enough.
Calcium is very important, but it’s just one player on a team of nutrients your body needs to form strong and healthy bone mass – and I’ll explain what you should look for in a moment.
Although bone health is more of a concern for women because of how estrogen levels change post-menopause and other factors, bone health is a challenge for many men too.
Here are a few reasons why bone health should matter to all of us.
3 Reasons Why Dense and Strong Bones Matter
First, there’s the most obvious one, as bones lose density they weaken and are more susceptible to breaking.
For those of us who’ve watched older family members experience fractures or breaks, it can be a life-changing and devasting experience – with a lot of pain, loss of mobility and independence, and sometimes sadly contribute to a premature death.
This alone is a good reason to take care of our bones - but here’s another:
We need strong bones to protect our heart, brain, lungs, and other vital organs if (or when) we fall, or if we’re in an accident.
We think of the 206 bones in our body as forming the skeletal system that gives us our shape and allows us to stand and move, but bones protect our key organs too.
If our bones aren’t strong enough to protect these organs when needed, it could be fatal, so that’s a second good reason why we need to be proactive about bone health.
Bone Health Can Affect Joints and Muscles Too.
The third reason why healthy bones matter is it can affect your joint and muscle health too.
A joint is where two bones meet, and muscle provides extra protection that helps keep bones from breaking – while also supporting joint function.
And if your joints or muscles are causing you discomfort, this typically cuts down on how much you move or exercise.
You know the old joke… a guy goes to his doctor and says “Doc it hurts when I do this” So the doctor says “well, don’t do that.”
When something causes us discomfort, we’re naturally going to do less of it, however…
Your Bones Depend on You Staying Active
When you do even moderate strength training, it can put a healthy stress on bones, which stimulates your body to add bone mass. Over time, this makes bones stronger.
Plus, exercise helps you maintain muscle mass. This can be more challenging as we age because we tend to lose muscle.
As mentioned, maintaining muscle helps protect and provide extra support for both bones and joints - and helps you feel better and makes it easier to move too.
So we want to keep in mind that when we take care of our bones, we help our joints and muscles also.
Your Bone Supplement Needs More than Calcium
When it comes to supplements and bones, the advice we often hear is just take calcium. After all, calcium is what makes bones hard dense and strong – so that’s all we need, right?
That’s what we thought 20 or 30 years ago, but frankly that thinking is outdated based on what we now know about bone formation in the body.
It takes a team of nutrients that support calcium, so your body can continuously make strong, healthy, and dense bones.
Further, the type of calcium in your supplement can make a world of difference.
And on top of this, in the modern 21st century world, we have another culprit that interferes with good bone health, which is added stress and hectic lifestyles.
This elevates the “stress hormone” cortisol, which can harm bone health (among many negative health effects). Specifically, high cortisol levels can interfere with bone formation and cause bones to degrade faster.
The good news is we address all of this with our TrueOsteo+ supplement, which we believe gives you more bone support than any other single nutritional supplement.
How It Works
It starts with a better source of calcium than you’ll find in most other supplements.
You may be surprised to hear that over 90% of the calcium you see in supplements comes from ground-up rock like limestone.
Calcium from rock is harder for your body to digest and use than dietary calcium, because it is an inorganic mineral (chemistry definition of organic, not agricultural).
Without getting too technical, this means the calcium is not in a digestion friendly state – and your body must do a lot of prep work to digest and absorb this type of calcium.
And as we get into our 40s and beyond, and our digestive systems don’t function as optimally as they used to, this becomes an even bigger challenge.
This limits the value of these supplements, and helps explain why, on average, most calcium supplements typically only slow down the loss of bone density, and why rock calcium sometimes causes stomach discomfort or disrupts regularity.
In TrueOsteo+, we don’t use rock calcium. Instead, we use a plant source of calcium derived from algae. This calcium is an organic mineral, which is what your body prefers and can more readily digest, absorb and put to work.
Plus, another advantage is this plant algae naturally contains organic magnesium (and many other useful trace minerals), which is also needed for the bone building process.
This ingredient is named AlgaeCal, and unlike rock calcium, research showed the average user was able to increase bone density after a year, not just slow bone density loss.
This alone can make a big difference in your bone health and strength – and AlgaeCal is very unlikely to cause stomach upset or interfere with healthy bowel movements. It has an excellent safety profile and history of use.
AlgaeCal plant calcium and magnesium is a great start, but as I mentioned we now know it takes more to maintain good bone health.
The Dynamic Duo - Vitamin D3 and Vitamin K2
You may know that vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium. However, vitamin D combines with vitamin K2 to something even more important for your bones.
Vitamin D and vitamin K2 work together to bind calcium to bone, which helps you form stronger bones.
On top of this, these vitamins also work in tandem to redirect calcium from places you don’t want it (like arteries and blood vessels) to bones. This helps support both bone and cardiovascular health.
For this reason, we strongly recommend that if you’re taking a calcium supplement, you also take both vitamin D3 and vitamin K2 to help make sure the calcium ends up where it belongs – in bones and not arteries.
The vitamin D3 in TrueOsteo+ is from organic algae and we use the MenaQ7 brand of vitamin K2, from chickpeas.
MenaQ7 is the only vitamin K2 with a long term 3-year study showing it helps both strengthen bones and protect cardiovascular health. TrueOsteo+ contains the same 180mcg daily serving used in these studies.
Another important detail you should be aware of is that when combined with minerals like calcium and magnesium, vitamin K2 can degrade in the capsule.
You don’t have to worry about this with TrueOsteo+ because the MenaQ7 is protected – this may not be the case with other supplements you see.
One caution about vitamin K2: if you are taking blood thinners you need to speak to your doctor before taking any supplement with vitamin K2 because of potential interactions.
Hopefully, you and your doctor can come up with a plan that works for you, but please be sure to do this.
Many Bone Supplements Lack This Nutrient
It’s silicon, which is the main component of the mineral silica. Silicon helps ignite the bone formation process by attracting calcium to bone, resulting in stronger bones.
Research shows that a shortfall of silicon intake is often associated with weaker bones.
TrueOsteo+ gives you silicon from one of nature’s best plant sources, which is bamboo shoots.
As you may know, bamboo shoots are widely consumed in India and Asia, and the extra silicon intake may have a nice bonus benefit - improving the appearance of your hair and nails.
Another unique part of the TrueOsteo+ formula, is it helps your body cope with stress better, and helps you keep cortisol in a healthy range.
New Study Confirms Bone Health Benefits of This Plant Extract
As I discussed earlier, when cortisol levels get out of whack, it can have a negative effect on bone health by interfering with the bone formation process, and even causing healthy bone to degrade.
That’s why TrueOsteo+ uniquely contains the Sensoril brand of ashwagandha, which studies show helps you maintain healthy cortisol levels.
On top of this, a recently published study indicated Sensoril ashwagandha can help support bone health and density in post-menopausal women
If for some reason, you don’t want or can’t take ashwagandha, we do have the standard TrueOsteo formula with no ashwagandha as an option.
Otherwise we strongly recommend the full TrueOsteo+ formula, which thousands of women and men have used to improve their bone density scores and maintain strong bones as they age.
It’s never too early or too late to support your bones with TrueOsteo+ or TrueOsteo.
Yours for Good Health,
Carl Pradelli
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