Enhancing Bone Health at Every Age

1. Dr. Andy Galpin

   The science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play, and life. Welcome to Perform.

2. Dr. Andy Galpin

   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.

3. Dr. Andy Galpin

   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-menopausal 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.

4. Dr. Andy Galpin

   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 LMNT. LMNT 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.

5. Dr. Andy Galpin

   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 LMNT. In fact, many of you will probably remember that I featured LMNT in my YouTube series on optimizing hydration nearly five years ago. I featured LMNT in these videos because their blend of 1,000 milligrams of sodium, 200 milligrams potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium really is unique and different than any other electrolyte on the market, and it has great scientific support. I use LMNT constantly, particularly when I'm sweating a lot, and I routinely make it a part of my clients' optimization programs.

6. Dr. Andy Galpin

   If you'd like to try LMNT, you can go to drinkLMNT.com/perform to claim a free LMNT sample pack with the purchase of any LMNT 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 satiety, 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.

7. Dr. Andy Galpin

   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 zero grams of sugar. If you're interested in trying these bars for yourself, you can go to davidprotein.com/perform. Again, that's davidprotein.com/perform. The first place I want to start is basic terminology. What you'll hear in this field is three basic things: osteoporosis, osteopenia, and then collectively poor bone health. And so very first, the way that you want to think about this is it's akin to something like diabetes, where you have pre-diabetes, and you have full diabetes, and diabetes would be collectively put together as something like poor metabolic health.

8. Dr. Andy Galpin

   And that's essentially what we're looking at. So osteopenia is this very first stop on the journey to poor bone health. Osteoporosis is now that full clinical disease Which they both have technical definitions. Officially, osteopenia is one standard deviation below the norm. Osteoporosis is two and a half standard deviations. But the point is we're trying to look at bone health as a progression and saying, "Hey, we know that if you get to technically osteoporosis, your prevalence and likelihood of breaking a bone jumps astronomically, and that then leads to shorter lifespan, more suffering, and so on and so forth. So let's stop this problem before it happens, and so we can identify people that are clearly along the path of low bone quality, and we'll call that osteopenia." You smash those things together, and we now collectively call it poor bone health. Globally, something like 40% of the population is in osteopenia.

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