🎃 Welcome to this week's seasonal waffle 🦇 !
Now, I realise this will make me sound like an old curmudgeon but 'back in my day' all health related messages at this time of year were on the perils of fireworks and (covers eyes in horror) picking up a hot sparkler from the floor! But times change and now it's all about Halloween 🎃!
One clear health hazard of this particular festival lies in eating ones own body weight in Tangfastics. But you don't need us to tell you that... So instead we're hoping to gain a little traction, and keep you out of traction, with some top tips from Dr Catherine on how to look after your skeleton! 💀
Let's start with nutrition, and no surprise to find that calcium is the star player here - it's a major building block of bone tissue, and can be found in useful quantities in dairy products, fortified plant milks, leafy greens, almonds and tofu. The gold standard is to get this nutrient via food rather than from a supplement, so why not use this handy calcium calculator to work out whether your current intake is adequate and then devise some tasty and healthy ways to boost your intake if it isn't!
The other big name in bone building is Vitamin D- important because it helps us absorb calcium from our food and then ushers it to where it's needed most in the body. Rather cleverly, your body can synthesise its very own Vitamin D upon exposure to sunlight. The one snag being that in the UK, between October and March, the sun disappears! Nutritional sources can pick up some of the slack - oily fish (salmon, mackerel), red meat, egg yolks, and fortified cereals/spreads are all useful, but this doesn't cut it for most of us. That's why Vitamin D is one of those rare cases where doctors are pretty unified in their recommendation of a daily supplement - 10 micrograms (400 IU) in the wintery months. Stronger supplements are available but approach with caution and certainly nothing above 4000IU/day unless under medical advice.
Now that we have the nutritional building blocks in place, there are a few other maintenance tips to bear in mind.
Use it, or start to lose it!
Most people are aware that muscles start to waste if they are not used, but did you know that the same is also true of your bones? In spite of its hard appearance, your skeleton is renewing itself all the time- Forth Bridge style - and movement, in particular any form of weight bearing exercise, stimulates that process, prompting the body to make your bone tissue denser and more resilient. A further benefit of any movement is that it maintains your mobility, balance and coordination- all of which lessen the likelihood of fracture-inducing trips and falls.
If you are curious or concerned about your bone density, our doctors are happy to review your risk factors and they may recommend something called a DEXA scan. A local clinic and friend of Winchester GP Bodyview can assist with these alongside other body composition analyses services, whilst Nuffield Wessex offer them as part of their suite of diagnostic imaging.
Mind the Gap.... and the slippery pathway... and that poorly lit step....
There's no getting away from it, Fall ushers in multiple new ways to, erm....fall.. but the simplest and most cursory of risk assessments is often all that is needed to keep you on your feet. Golden leaves 🍂 are glorious on the tree, but as treacherous ⚠️ as ice on a wet pavement. Lower light levels make even familiar routes trickier to negotiate, so now is the time to clear them of clutter and ensure that outside lighting is up to the job. One last little nag... and then we'll stop haunting you 🧙♀️ PLEASE make sure that you are suitably shod for autumnal terrain. Yes, lacing up your sensible shoes is a bit of a faff, and might not win all the style points. But a trip to A&E is even more tedious, and you don't often see plaster casts in the fashion pages.... ;-)
Here's to an absence of trips and plentiful treats 🎃
Winchester GP xx