Jonesin' for Your Bones (+ How That Relates to Your Skin) – Don't Lose 30% at Menopause!

With all the other stuff I have to be vigilant about–ravages of stress, how current I am with my man, the mortgage, my daughter’s insane sports schedule, global warming and the lack of snow in Tahoe, my Mother’s thyroid, why 84% of women struggle with insomnia and how I want to fix it TODAY (just to name a few of the conversations in my head in the past 5 min), one thing I thought I was relatively immune from–that didn’t yet need to enter my perpetual worry machine–was my bones.

Turns out I’m wrong.

I take bones completely for granted. Long femur, like that old Operation game, hip at top, knee at bottom. A little achey when I run too long but the bones are just part of the silent infrastructure until…BAM! Your period starts to sputter, you notice your skin has morphed into the “Seamed and Brown” Denise Levertov poem and I have…what?! Osteopenia? WTF?

But I do everything right! I play by the rules! I eat organic! I exercise regularly (and sometimes even like it)! I do yoga! I teach it, Dog! I sort of manage stress! Well, not so great on that front. But, seriously… no family history!

What? You say I have too much acid in my food plan? Not enough copper or stomach acid? Wait, you want me both to eat less acid food and take a stomach acid supplement? Isn’t that contradictory?

Well, Darling Reader, it’s not. It’s actually just good ol’ cutting edge science.

There’s more. And of course, how you treat your bones is how you treat your whole bod, including skin. Within the first 5 years of menopause, you accelerate you bone loss, for a grand total of 30% loss of your collagen, which girds your bone and your skin. Result? Slightly weaker bones, slightly saggy skin.

Damn. I don’t take this data sitting down. Time for a street fight. There’s much to be done to prevent this, with how you eat, move & even micro doses of hormones, when appropriate.