Health
Why You're Not Getting Enough Magnesium—And 4 Easy Ways To Fix It
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Keri Glassman, RD, MS, CDN, and founder of Nutritious Life says her favorite way to get magnesium is the old-fashioned way: adding dark leafy greens like spinach, kale, and Swiss chard to her diet whenever possible. You can also nosh on broccoli, squash, nuts (particularly almonds), beans, as well as cacao powder. Here's a magnesium-rich food chart for easy reference. It's best if you can work these magnesium-rich foods into your regular diet routine.
“Almonds just happen to be my favorite go-to afternoon snack,” Glassman says. “But when in doubt, I also supplement my diet with magnesium as insurance. I often take a supplement right before bed as part of my bedtime routine.”
This trail mix is the perfect magnesium-filled snack:
Tailgate Party Nut Mix
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Magnesium has been popping up in beauty products like deodorant lately, but can you actually absorb it through your skin? Science says yes—but you shouldn't rely on this method alone, as the absorption is minimal and unreliable.
Magnesium sulfate, or Epsom salts, can be added to a bath and absorbed, at least in some degree, through the skin, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. In addition to upping your magnesium intake, this method can be a big help with any swelling, inflammation, or muscle aches and pains—plus it just feels nice. Here's more on how to use epsom salts around your home.
The jury is out on whether other types of magnesium, like the magnesium hydroxide natural deodorant company PiperWai uses in its formula, can also be absorbed by your body, but it's certainly not doing you any harm, and it can help your BO. Founder Jess Edelstein explains that because of its alkaline pH, magnesium is super-effective as an odor and sweat reducing deodorant. (Here are nine more of the best natural deodorants that actually work.)
Try it: Epsom Salt by Sky Organics, $15, amazon.com
Paige Wolf is the author of Spit That Out: The Overly Informed Parent's Guide to Raising Healthy Kids in the Age of Environmental Guilt, offering advice on making green living practical, manageable, and affordable. Follow @paigewolf on Twitter.
The article Why You're Not Getting Enough Magnesium—And 4 Easy Ways To Fix It originally appeared on Rodale’s Organic Life.
Will 1 Minute Of Running A Day Really Strengthen Your Bones?
WELLCOME LIBRARY, LONDON
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The study, from researchers at the University of Exeter and the University of Leicester, is published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, and takes advantage of a massive collection of data called the UK Biobank, which includes (among other things) activity-monitoring and bone health data from 100,000 people between the ages of 40 and 69. The researchers wanted to figure out if the patterns of physical activity measured by accelerometers could predict who had the healthiest bones.
There are, of course, lots of previous studies that have looked at questions like this. Surprisingly, some studies have failed to find any link between the amount of vigorous exercise people do and how strong their bones are. One possible explanation is that most accelerometer data is averaged over relatively long periods of time, typically 15 to 60 seconds, which “smoothes out” the most vigorous jolts of activity. That makes sense for studies of cardiovascular fitness, where sustaining an elevated heart rate is what matters. But for bone health, short high-impact jolts are thought to stimulate bone remodeling, so in this case the researchers measured peak acceleration data every second.
What sort of accelerations are we talking about? Testing indicated that, with this set-up, running at 12:00 per mile pace gives you a jolt equivalent to about 75% of the force of gravity, while running at 9:36 mile pace is about 100% the force of gravity. Subjects in the study wore a three-dimensional accelerometer for a week, allowing the researchers to calculate how much time (summing up individual seconds) they spent above those two thresholds.
This is where the headline result comes from. For pre-menopausal women, accumulating at least one minute per day above the 100% gravity threshold offered a statistically significant improvement in bone mineral density and other measures of bone health. Accumulating at least two minutes gave an even bigger boost.
For post-menopausal women, the same pattern was seen at the lower 75% gravity threshold. In broad terms, that suggests older women only need to jog to get the same bone benefits that younger women get from quicker running. That may be because your biomechanics change as you get older, resulting in a more jarring impact with each stride. Or it may be because your bones get weaker as you age, so require less of a stimulus to get stronger. There’s a bit of evidence for both those possibilities, but not definitive in either case.
Are these findings a massive surprise? Not really. There are three basic ways you can stimulate your bones to get stronger. One is simply to be on your feet a lot, doing weight-bearing exercise. This is no longer thought to be a particularly effective way of strengthening your bones, but there is some evidence that people who walk a lot tend to have stronger bones.
Strengthen weak ankles with these ballet-inspired moves:
Ballet Inspired Moves To Strengthen Weak Ankles
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Another approach is to do resistance training. Strengthening your muscles puts tension on your bones, which in turn triggers them to get stronger.
The third approach, which seems to be the most powerful trigger of all, is jarring impacts. Simply jumping as a high as you can a few times a day can have powerful effects on your bones. In fact, after somewhere between 40 and 100 impacts, the bone benefits seem to max out, so this is a case where more isn’t necessarily better. Studies have found positive effects from simple intervention like 10 jumps, three times a day in schoolchildren, or five sets of 10 jumps three times a week in adult men.
Thanks to the detailed every-second analysis of the accelerometer data, this new study confirms that you don’t necessarily need to do jump-specific exercise—running itself gives you the jarring impacts you need. That helps explain why, for example, runners tend to have better bone density than cyclists.
This doesn’t mean you should only run for one minute per day. There are, of course, many other benefits to running. But it does suggest yet another reason to include some short bursts of fast running in your routine a few times a week, because the impacts are highest when you’re running fast. And in this case, the too-good-to-be-true headlines turn out to be more or less true: Even a minute or two is enough to make a difference.
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The article Will 1 Minute of Running a Day Really Strengthen Your Bones? originally appeared on Runner’s World.
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