Muscle up your bones

Add weights – The No. 1 way to stimulate bones is with weight-bearing exercise. Do some kind of resistance training that puts stress on your bones. Use weights, resistance bands, exercise, or your own body to strengthen bones – and the muscles that pull on them. You must use heavy enough weight or resistance to fail in less than two minutes of the exercise to stress your bone enough to incorporate calcium.

Stretch it out – Lengthening your muscles and giving them the ability to adapt to all kinds of situations is important to bones. Stretching gives you flexibility to maneuver if you fall.

Find balance – Train your body to adapt to unstable circumstances. You can:

Have a good setup – Set up your home to avoid falls. Make sure rooms are well lit, get rid of slippery rugs, use shower mats, and avoid having shiny floors, which can cause glare. Place furniture so it can help you navigate.

Learn to fall – When you realize that 30 percent of older people fall every year, it’s a good idea to prepare yourself to fall with the least impact possible. Get a coach here. Minimize the force by falling on as much surface as possible. When you know you’re going to fall, don’t resist; just try to fall safely. Your muscles have memory and may help you fall correctly and minimize injury.

Take a calcium supplement – Choose a calcium citrate supplement (600 mg at a time) because some calcium supplements have been known to contain lead. And add vitamin D (1000 IU a day).

Chew while you drive – Keep chewable calcium citrate supplements in your car and take one every time you start to drive. Because your body can only absorb 600 milligrams every two hours, taking calcium throughout the day helps you get the 1,500 milligrams recommended per day.

Eat foods with magnesium – Add 400 milligrams of magnesium to your diet each day. To get it, eat whole grains, leafy green vegetables, and nuts – and have something acidic, like orange juice, to increase absorption.

Get that vitamin K, too – Vitamin K helps move calcium from your blood to your bone. People deficient in vitamin K have been shown to have a 30 percent higher risk of hip fractures.

Avoid excessive alcohol, cigarettes, and vitamin A – They can hurt bone formation.

We remake our bones every decade. If we don’t nurture and challenge them, the body won’t bother to keep them strong as we get older.