Extreme Dieting can Lead to Brittle Bones

The actress Gwyneth Paltrow has the ultimate Hollywood figure, extremely thin and leggy and we have all seen the pictures of her looking sweaty and seemingly healthy coming from her yoga classes. She has one of those incredibly thin figures that most ‘ordinary women' are unlikely to ever achieve. Like Madonna Gwyneth was said to be following a strict macrobiotic diet which severely limits eating of dairy produce and puts an emphasis on eating unprocessed vegetarian foods mainly composed of grains, pulses and vegetables.
This diet is considered to be far too limiting by most nutritionists and by following it one's body would be deprived of valuable nutrients such as iron, calcium and protein. Well, these nutritionists might have been proved right. Recently Gwyneth Paltrow revealed in her online newsletter that she is suffering from the precursor to osteoporosis, called osteopenia - basically a thinning of the bones which occurs prior to developing full-blown osteoporosis.

Osteoporosis is a condition normally associated with older women in particular, but Ms Paltrow is currently 37 years old. It has been speculated that her strict dieting to maintain her svelte figure could be the cause of her brittle bones.

What many young woman do not know is that you need to build strong bones by the age of 35 or you risk developing brittle bones in later life. If you spend your life on a diet low in calcium and vitamin D (needed to help the absorption of calcium) then you are putting yourself at risk from developing brittle bones. Osteoporosis means that your bones literally become thinner and structurally less strong, and people with this condition are at a greater risk of suffering bone fractures and breaks than those with strong, healthy bones.

Many women abandon nutrition in an attempt to lose weight speedily without thinking about the consequences of their health - and as Gwyneth's diagnosis shows, those consequences can happen relatively early in life. The key to losing weight without your diet impacting on your overall health is to eat a nutritionally balanced diet without cutting any one food group entirely. Many women will cut out high fat dairy foods like cheese in an attempt to shed the pounds, however, by doing that you are also cutting out valuable calcium from your diet. Some low fat dairy items that are on the market actually contain higher amounts of calcium than their higher fat counterparts - skimmed milk is one example. People also associate calcium with dairy produce, but this mineral can also be found in sesame seeds, tofu, some fish and in green leafy vegetables.

The next time you look in envy at an impossibly thin female celebrity and want to emulate her, make sure that when embarking on any diet plan that it is nutritionally sound. Thinner may look better, but no one looks good when they are so fragile that the smallest knock will break a bone, and besides, plaster-casts are so out of fashion!