Ladies out there! Eat fruits, veggies for healthy bones in your golden years

Washington D.C. [USA], Jan. 27 (ANI): Older women, please take note. Include more vegetables, fruits, fish and whole grains in your diet to boost bone health and prevent fractures. The findings indicated that women with the least-inflammatory diets lost less bone density during the six-year follow-up period than their peers with the most-inflammatory diets. Researchers from the The Ohio State University in the U.S. examined data inflammatory elements in the diet to bone mineral density and fractures and found new associations between food and bone health. Furthermore, diets with low inflammatory potential appeared to correspond to lower risk of hip fracture among one subgroup of the study -- post-menopausal white women younger than 63. "The findings suggest that women's bone health could benefit when they choose a diet higher in beneficial fats, plants and whole grains," said lead study author Tonya Orchard. The Dietary Inflammatory Index - developed to assess the quality of diet from maximally to minimally inflammatory based on nutrients consumed - helped them accomplish that. For the new analysis - the first of its kind - the research team looked at dietary data from 1,60,191 women and assigned inflammation scores based on 32 food components that the women reported consuming in the three months prior to their enrolment. They used bone-mineral-density data from a subset of 10,290 women. Fracture data was collected for the entire study group. Higher scores were associated with an almost 50 percent larger risk of hip fracture in Caucasian women younger than 63, compared with the risk for women in the group with the lowest inflammatory scores. "This suggests that a high-quality, less-inflammatory diet may be especially important in reducing hip fracture risk in younger women," the researchers wrote. The results revealed that the women with lower inflammation scores were more physically active as a group and therefore were at a slightly greater risk of falls. "These women with healthier diets didn't lose bone as quickly as those with high-inflammation diets, and this is important because after menopause women see a drastic loss in bone density that contributes to fractures," Orchard added. (ANI)