Dancing skeletons are something usually associated with horror movies yet, in all honesty, they could really be trying to tell us something, that is dancing your childhood and teenage years away is an excellent way of strengthening your bones!

Our bones and skeleton health is something most of us never think about unless we fall and break or injure an arm or a leg when playing football, cricket, tennis or just generally acting the fool, like in dare devil games where we indulge in some pretty risky business at times. But, if you do not develop strong and healthy bones in your growing years then you will most definitely pay for it later in life.

Girls’ bones reach their maximum strength around the age of 18 years and boy’s by the age of 20, so it is extremely important to do everything possible to ensure that they have developed properly by this time and there are a number of ways, including regular exercise of course, that you can do this and, if you’re thinking of stopping reading right here, please don’t as without strong bones your life will end up as a very miserable existence.

One of the most important things to pay attention to is your everyday diet, as you’ve probably heard this before but… you are what you eat. This basically means that if you eat all the wrong stuff, your bones will be weak, your skin blotchy, your hair stringy and lots of other nasty things that are much better avoided.

First and foremost, it is important to eat a diet rich in calcium, not just when you are young and growing but when you are older too as few people realise that bone mass is constantly building up and breaking down, no matter your age. Cells called ‘osteoclasts’ work hard at breaking down your bone mass while other cells called ‘osteoblasts’ work on building them up. If your body as a whole is low in calcium and other important minerals, it leaches them out of your bones and transports them to where they are otherwise required. The human body and the skeleton on which everything hangs together is an amazing piece of finely balanced, delicately tuned machinery and also like other machinery, it needs care, attention and regular maintenance.

Foods that ensure your body gets all the calcium it needs include some things you might not be so happy about and others that you undoubtedly relish, but as everyone has different tastes there is no set menu, this is something you need to organise for yourself and perhaps ask your parents to help with.

Good stuff includes dairy products, particularly low fat, high calcium ones such as milk, cheese, yoghourt and eggs with the yolk of the egg being far more important than the white. Children who don’t like to drink milk might enjoy soy milk instead or if they don’t like this then perhaps they are happy to eat full milk ice cream or other dairy desserts.

Green leafy vegetables tend not to be all that popular with children but all of them, cabbage included, are good news on the health front as are almonds, walnuts, sesame, sunflower and even pumpkin seeds but none of these should be the salted variety. Onions, by the way can be cooked or in raw, have been scientifically proven to help your bones absorb calcium so onions with everything is the order of the day!

Red meat is okay in moderation, chicken is better and fish with bones like sardines, mackerel, kippers and tinned salmon are absolutely great, the latter four fantastic on toast, with salad or made into nourishing fish cakes or party dips. One of the best calcium foods of all is the versatile channa and who wouldn’t walk a mile for a great big bowl of channa saalan on a cold day and one of delicious humus with salad and pita bread in the summer?

Brightly coloured fruits and vegetables — purple aubergines, red carrots, ruby red pomegranates, crimson beetroot — are prime examples. They are all good bone news as they contain polyphenols which stimulate the cells responsible for bone formation. Fresh fruit juices are good, so is green tea and lots of the milk-based drinks that are around these days.

Bad bone food and drinks include both black tea and ordinary coffee, but you don’t have to give up on these, just opt for the decaffeinated ones instead and after a little while you won’t even notice the difference.

Foods that have a negative impact on your bones are things that are highly acidic and are heavy on chemical additives or are top heavy in the salt department.

A really good bone health diet is one high in natural, unprocessed foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and fresh fish, chicken and the occasional red meat feast if you like.

Regular exercise is a great way of increasing bone density as are walking, running, tennis, basketball, gymnastics, football, yoga, pilates and Tae Kwan do. All of these are what is known as weight bearing exercises but, unfortunately, swimming is not included as water counteracts this.

You can actually eat the best bone diet possible without it doing you any good at all if you choose to be a couch potato over someone who keeps on moving around.

Another important point is that you need Vitamin D too for the proper formation of your bones. Vitamin D helps the body and bones to absorb calcium and if you are deficient in this, calcium tends to pass straight through the system and out of the other end.

Vitamin D is found in egg yolks, oily fish, milk, soy milk and a few other food items but the easiest way to get it, and in this our climate is beneficial, is to expose your hands and feet, more if you like, to direct sunshine for 15 minutes every single day possible. The Vitamin D absorbed from sunshine is stored in the body for up to three months. This doesn’t mean you should only sun yourself once every three months!

Finally, if you don’t make sure that your bones are strong and healthy in your younger years than when you are older you could well be one of the millions of people suffering from osteoporosis or brittle bone disease. This debilitating disease affects women more than men but men do get it too and the number of sufferers is growing rapidly as a direct result of dietary and lifestyle changes over the past few decades.

Brittle bone disease dissolves your bones over a period of time; they become brittle so break very easily and then can refuse to heal. In the advance stages, spinal problems develop as bones degenerate, hips are easily broken and the ability to walk can, eventually, be lost. This disease used to be far more prevalent in the ‘developed’ world where people have been eating more processed foods for longer than residents of the ‘developing world’ whose diet was, until very recently, very healthy. Switching back to natural foods, paying attention to eating lots of calcium-rich things, sunning yourself (without using sunscreen) and leading an active lifestyle can really have you dancing for life!