For Teens: Looking Good Inside Out

If you’re like most teens, there’s a lot going on in your life – school, dates, parties, thinking about careers. You’re probably working hard to look and feel your best.

One way to look and feel good is to have strong, healthy bones.

Think of it this way: Your bones are where good looks begin! Your favorite clothes look their best on a healthy body. Your body looks its best on a set of strong, healthy bones.

YOUR ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME CHANCE FOR HEALTHY BONES

Bones are not lifeless structures that just hold people upright – they’re living tissue. Bone is constantly changing, with bits of old bone being removed and new bone laid down. In fact, you can think of bone as a bank account, where you make “deposits” and “withdrawals” of bone tissue.

While you’re a teen, you’re depositing much more bone than you’re withdrawing, so your skeleton grows in size and density. Your bone tissue will reach its peak mass by your mid-30s.

You’ll need a large bank account of bone tissue to draw from when you’re older. At menopause (generally around age 50), women’s bodies change in a way that has a big effect on their bones. We begin producing smaller amounts of the hormone estrogen than we did before. Estrogen helps slow down bone loss – so, with less estrogen in our systems, women generally lose a great deal of bone tissue in the years after menopause.

Your teen years are your once-in-a-lifetime chance to build up a bank account of dense bone tissue, so you will have plenty of bone tissue to “withdraw” when the time comes. THERE IS NO BETTER TIME TO START THAN NOW!

A WORD ABOUT OSTEOPOROSIS

Have you noticed that some older women and men have a stooped posture? They were once as straight and as strong as you are, but now they suffer from osteoporosis.

Osteoporosis is a rapid loss of bone tissue. When a person has osteoporosis, it means her bank account of bone tissue has been withdrawn to such a low level that her bones have become weak and break easily. Osteoporosis is painful and disfiguring, and it has no cure.

The way to prevent osteoporosis from happening to you when you get older is to build strong bones NOW with a balanced diet and an active lifestyle. All you need to do is make a few simple changes in your daily routine. Plus, you’ll have more energy, better muscle tone, and straighter posture (terrific for your figure).

Remember, your teen years are your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build healthy bones!