Diets high in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fish and nuts have been shown to reduce inflammation
Anti-inflammatory diets (high in vegetables, fruits, fish, whole grains) could boost bone health and prevent fractures in some women, a new study suggests. Researchers examined data from the Women’s Health Initiative to compare levels of inflammatory elements in the diet to bone mineral density and fractures and found new associations between food and bone health.
Women with the least-inflammatory diets (based on a scoring system called the Dietary Inflammatory Index) lost less bone density during the 6-year follow-up period than their peers with the most-inflammatory diets. This was despite the fact that they started off with lower bone density overall. 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 < 63 yo.
The findings suggest that women’s bone health could benefit when they choose a diet higher in beneficial fats, plants and whole grains, said Orchard, who is part of Ohio State’s Food Innovation Center. “This suggests that as women age, healthy diets are impacting their bones,” Orchard said. “I think this gives us yet another reason to support the recommendations for a healthy diet in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.”
Because the study was observational, it’s not possible to definitively link dietary patterns and bone health and fracture outcomes. The new findings support a growing body of evidence that factors that increase inflammation can increase osteoporosis risk. “By looking at the full diet rather than individual nutrients, these data provide a foundation for studying how components of the diet might interact to provide benefit and better inform women’s health and lifestyle choices,” said Jackson, who is national chair of the Women’s Health Initiative steering committee.
Dietary information, bone density and fracture were collected from a large group of the participants in the Women’s Health Initiative, the largest study of postmenopausal women’s health undertaken in U.S. history. Participants in the WHI were 50 to 79 when they enrolled in the study of prevention and control of common diseases impacting older women. Enrollment ran from 1993 to 1998. For the new analysis the team looked at dietary data from 160,191 women and assigned inflammation scores based on 32 food components that the women reported consuming in the three months prior to their enrollment.
The researchers used bone-mineral-density data from a subset of 10,290 women. Fracture data was collected for the entire study group. Orchard and her colleagues found a correlation only between high-inflammatory diets and fracture in younger white women in the study. Higher scores were associated with an almost 50% 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.
But in the study group overall, more-inflammatory diets were not linked to fracture and – in fact – they found a modestly lower risk of lower-arm and total fracture in women with the highest dietary inflammation scores. One possible explanation included in the study: The women with lower inflammation scores were more physically active as a group and therefore were at a slightly greater risk of falls.
Women with the least-inflammatory diets had lower bone mineral density overall at the start of the study, but lost less bone than their high-inflammation peers. The lower bone density to start could be because women with healthier diets are more likely to be of a smaller build, Orchard said. Larger people have higher bone density to support their larger frames.
“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 said. https://news.osu.edu/news/2017/01/26/diet-and-bones/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jbmr.3070/epdf
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