Prevention of Calcium Deficiency

Calcium deficiency is one of the most preventable nutritional problems in India - the prevention costs almost nothing and pays out across a lifetime.

Build the daily habit

• A dairy serving (or two) every day: milk, curd, buttermilk, paneer - pick what the household will actually eat
• Ragi into the grain rotation: one ragi meal a few times a week changes the arithmetic
• Sesame in the kitchen: til chutney, til-gud in winter, sesame on salads
• Greens most days: amaranth, methi, drumstick leaves, bathua in season

Protect the absorption

• Sunlight: 15-20 minutes of midday sun on arms and legs several times a week (darker skin needs more)
• Vitamin D testing for the at-risk: children, pregnant women, the elderly, the housebound - supplement when low
• Tea and coffee away from meals, not with them
• Go easy on colas, very salty food, smoking and heavy alcohol - each taxes bone

Use the body's own builder: exercise

• Weight-bearing activity (walking, stairs, dancing) and resistance exercise tell bone to stay strong
• Children playing outdoors build the bone bank they will draw on at 70
• The elderly: balance and strength work prevents the fall as much as the fracture

Protect the high-demand years

• Adolescence: the biggest bone-building window of life - milk, ragi, play, sunlight
• Pregnancy and breastfeeding: follow the prescribed calcium and vitamin D schedule - it protects the mother's skeleton
• Menopause and after: bone density check, ~1,200 mg calcium daily with vitamin D, exercise; discuss bone-protection medicines if density is already falling
• After 60: annual risk review, vitamin D level, fall-proofing the home (lighting, rails, no loose rugs)

The classical prevention

Classical prevention of depletion is routine itself: regular warm meals, milk and ghee in the diet, oil massage, adequate sleep, avoiding chronic overexertion and suppression of hunger - keeping vata from drying the tissues out across the decades. Modern prevention says the same thing with a DEXA scan.

One-line summary

Feed the bone bank daily, keep vitamin D up, move against gravity, and guard the adolescent, pregnancy and post-menopause windows - the cheapest fracture is the one that never happens.