When most people think of osteoporosis, they probably think of an elderly woman with her back hunched over. Most likely, a teenage girl is not thinking about this disease ever affecting her, but the teenage years are the best time to bring this debilitating condition to light. When teenagers change their habits at an early age, they can help keep osteoporosis at bay down the road.
Since most teenagers are more in tune with the latest fad, song, or iPhone application, there is something that parents and other adult role models can apply to these young lives, and that is direction on how to follow a healthy diet that can protect them from the debilitating effects of osteoporosis when they are much older.
A serious dietary risk among teenagers today is not just the foods they are eating, but the beverages they are consuming that can put their bones at risk.
Osteoporosis, a crippling disease that results in low bone density and increased bone fragility, typically does not rear its ugly head until the middle-aged years. However, it can begin to manifest itself during adolescence, when the skeleton is very busy absorbing dietary calcium and making almost all of the bone mass that will carry the teenager throughout life.
To ensure lifelong bone health for teenagers, especially girls, it is important to make sure they consume enough calcium while they are young so that they can achieve their maximum bone density. By one’s mid-20s, the critical window period for calcium absorption starts to close, and a woman’s ability to get enough calcium in her bones is greatly reduced.
It is believed that just 14 percent of teenage American girls are getting enough calcium in their daily diets to allow them to avoid osteoporosis by the time they are in their 50s. In fact, only one in seven girls eats enough dairy foods and other calcium-rich products to attain the adequate bone mass necessary to prevent brittle bones and fractures when they are in their middle-aged years and beyond.
It has been reported that teenagers in the 1970s drank twice as much milk as teenagers today. Now that number can be reversed, and we see the consumption of milk among teens down by 40 percent, but the amount of soda consumption has doubled. It is a disturbing fact that sodas have replaced the calcium-rich milk beverage as a means of refreshment. To exacerbate this problem, the caffeine in most sodas increases the amount of calcium that one excretes through urine output, reducing the calcium available for bone development.
Parents and policy-makers need to find ways to limit the excessive soda consumption among teens, encouraging more intake of low-fat milk and other nutritious sources of calcium. On the home front, parents can encourage healthier eating and restrict the amount of sodas consumed by their teenagers. It is also important to increase the nutritional standards on the foods sold in vending machines at schools. (In my son’s high school, for example, they have eliminated all sodas, replacing them with various bottled water beverages and juices in the machines.)
In my home state of Kansas, the legislature has been considering a statute that would do just that. In the mix is Senate Bill 499 that would make it a requirement for every school district in the state “to follow the same exemplary guidelines for the sale of so-called competitive foods in schools that a minority of Kansas districts now follows voluntarily.” These guidelines restrict the sale of beverages in schools to water, low-fat milk, and 100 percent juice.
It is a challenge for most teenagers to imagine themselves as middle-aged individuals one day. However, we need to educate ourselves and our teenagers now to improve their diets, or they can expect a debilitating disease like osteoporosis one day, and that day will come sooner than they expect!
(Information for this article was obtained in "Kansas City Enhance," a health and wellness publication, the April/May 2010 issue.)