Build Bone with Mineral Water and Eating for Exercise Motivation
Are you ready for another cutting-edge aging update? I stay on top of the current research so you don't have to.
This week, let's talk a bit more about hydration. Last week, I shared this study, which pointed out the importance of staying hydrated to combat chronic disease and premature aging. The conclusion:
Stay well hydrated.
What if you could better hydrate AND work on your bone health, specifically calcium absorption, as well? Mineral water may be what you need.
According to this study, mineral water had calcium absorption equal to milk and a calcium supplement in healthy test subjects. That's right, drinking mineral water produced the same increase in blood calcium levels as taking a supplement or drinking milk.
What I found interesting about the study was the Vitamin D levels. Before the study was performed, all participants were given a Vitamin D supplement for 4 weeks to make sure calcium was absorbed. All the participants had adequate Vitamin D levels on the day of the experiment.
Takeaway: Mineral water may be a good way to get more Calcium and stay more hydrated. And without adequate Vitamin D, it won't be absorbed - get those Vitamin D levels checked and supplement if needed.
Now on to the motivation to exercise. Maybe what you eat has more impact than you thought.
This study just came out in Dec. 2022, in the journal Nature. The authors found a gut-brain connection in mice that seemed to help motivate some mice, labeled the active mice, to run and run, while other mice, labeled the lazy mice, did not. When the running mice were given antibiotics that changed their gut microbiome, the running mice became lazy mice. When the lazy mice were given gut microbiomes from the active mice, they became active. Crazy cool. It may be that the antibiotics destroyed some of the dopamine receptors that helped with that exercise high. Restoring the microbiome then increased the exercise pleasure.
Takeaway: Get your healthy gut microbiome in order. This can be done with foods like yogurt, probiotics, Kefir, Kombucha, and fermented foods such as sauerkraut, and pickles.
Thanks for being here,
Andrea Trombley PT, DPT
References:
Dmitrieva, N. I., Gagarin, A., Liu, D., Wu, C. O., & Boehm, M. (2023). Middle-age high normal serum sodium as a risk factor for accelerated biological aging, chronic diseases, and premature mortality. EBioMedicine, 87, 104404. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2022.104404
Dohnalová, L., Lundgren, P., Carty, J. R. E., Goldstein, N., Wenski, S. L., Nanudorn, P., Thiengmag, S., Huang, K. P., Litichevskiy, L., Descamps, H. C., Chellappa, K., Glassman, A., Kessler, S., Kim, J., Cox, T. O., Dmitrieva-Posocco, O., Wong, A. C., Allman, E. L., Ghosh, S., Sharma, N., … Thaiss, C. A. (2022). A microbiome-dependent gut-brain pathway regulates motivation for exercise. Nature, 612(7941), 739–747. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05525-z
Greupner, T., Schneider, I., & Hahn, A. (2017). Calcium Bioavailability from Mineral Waters with Different Mineralization in Comparison to Milk and a Supplement. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 36(5), 386–390. https://doi.org/10.1080/07315724.2017.1299651