By Sally Lehrman

In a recent phone conversation, my mother nonchalantly mentioned that the technician who’d given her a bone density test had told her not to let anyone hug her: Her weak bones might break from the pressure.

But Mom said she’d ignored the advice. “I’m just not going to live in fear all the time!” she declared. I was quiet, afraid to imagine what it would be like not to be able to hug her anymore. Or worse yet, to feel her skeleton crack between my arms.

Mom’s structural health got me to thinking about my own—and I realized I need to start taking it a lot more seriously. The process of skeletal weakening often gets under way when a woman is in her forties, right where I am now, and speeds up after menopause, when estrogen levels plummet. And while many women in Mom’s generation relied on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to protect their bones, recent research linking HRT to cancer and heart disease has made that a questionable route.

Everywhere I look, dairy products are touted as the way to keep my skeleton strong. But like millions of other women, I happen to be lactose intolerant; all it takes is one bite of cheese to saddle me with an ache in my stomach for the rest of the day. Clearly, it’s time for me to step up my efforts on the bone-preserving front, but I can’t rely on the mainstream strategy of boosting dairy intake.

Luckily, there’s a lot I can do to make sure I won’t have to pull back from
the outstretched arms of my loved ones. Here’s the latest thinking on the best ways for the dairy-averse to support the bones that support us—along with some surprising news about what’s not worth doing. Food Dos and Don’ts

Sidle up to soy
Kenneth Setchell, a professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, recommends that people who are lactose intolerant substitute soy milk for cow’s milk on their morning cereal. He and other researchers are convinced that certain estrogenlike chemicals in soy, called isoflavones, can keep bones strong. In one two-year study, Setchell asked 54 postmenopausal women to drink two glasses of soy milk containing 85 grams of isoflavones a day; another 54 drank soy with the isoflavones removed. At the end of the study, the isoflavone drinkers had retained their bone mass, while the others had lost 4.5 percent of theirs. “The findings are quite encouraging,” he says. Flaxseed, nuts, and whole grains are good sources of other types of plant-based estrogens.

What’s more, many soy milks come with added calcium, as does some tofu. (You won’t find the bean curd advertised as “fortified.” But check the label; products in which calcium salt has been used to “set” the tofu contain about 430 mg per half-cup.)

Try a different kind of dairy
Goat and sheep’s milks, cheeses, and yogurts, which are rapidly becoming more available, are also worth a try for people like me: Although they contain lactose, some lactose-intolerant people can tolerate them, and they’re just as rich in calcium as dairy products from cow’s milk.

Eat fortified foods
Supermarket shelves are ever more crowded these days with calcium-enriched foods. Check the labels on cereals and orange juice; you can often add several hundred milligrams ... [continue to next page]