Plant power for bone health
Don’t shoot the messenger!
A lot of you tell me you just plain don’t like fish sources for omega-3s, but you also don’t want to lose out on its health benefits. Okay, I hear you! I’ll just have to give you another option—and a healthy way to promote bone health.
Researchers put together a study to take a look at plant-based omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), with a particular interest in looking at bone health. I realize what a mouthful that is, so I’ll just refer to it as “PUFA” for short.
What made this study different from others of its kind was the use of whole food sources of omega-3 rather than oil supplements. Also, those supplement studies do not typically control the background diet, in which other nutrients and their effect on bones could also affect the results of the study.
This study did control the diet. Three diets were created, which were given sequentially to study participants. Six weeks per diet, with a three week “break” in between. During the break, participants could go back to eating their normal way before resuming with the next diet in their sequence.
For the control diet, the researchers used what they considered to be an average American diet. The other two diets were high in PUFA. In order to single out the type of PUFA that had an effect, they had to make one heavy on linoleic acid (LA)—an omega-6 fatty acid, and the other diet heavier on alpha linolenic acid (ALA)—an omega-3 (which is the PUFA they wanted to focus on).
Each of the high PUFA diets included walnuts, which are high in both types of fatty acid. To differentiate, the ALA diet also included flaxseed oil—which is high in ALA.
And to be sure the participants stuck to their prescribed diets, their blood was tested to see that no cheating was going on!
To measure results, researchers did blood tests using two biological markers of bone health: One indicates bone formation, and the other indicates bone breakdown. This is a natural process that goes on in your body, and the process produces measurable chemicals. If more breakdown occurs than does rebuilding, osteoporosis is the result. Balance occurs when there is less bone is being broken down and the same amount is being formed.
In this study, the breakdown chemicals decreased significantly during the ALA diet and only marginally during the LA diet, as compared to the control diet. The bone-building chemical was not affected by any of the diets. The researchers concluded that a plant-based source of omega-3 PUFA (the ALA-heavy diet) does promote bone health. And remember—there was nothing fancy involved—the ALA diet just used whole food sources.
I always recommend you eat an as-close-to-nature diet as possible. Go for variety to cover your health bases. You’ll be promoting not only bone health, but also a beneficial overall healthy lifestyle.
