Now that I am at the age that I find myself thinking about my bones and how they are doing, I was happy to find Dr. Lani’s No-Nonsense Bone Health Guide by Lani Simpson, DC, CCD. For people like me who have questions about whether you are getting the right nutrients for optimal bone health, or whether your back pains require special attention, Dr. Lani’s book is quite helpful.

The book is broken down into sections that explain the kind of testing and tools that doctors use to diagnose bone density and assess you for your personal fracture risk.  It then goes on to:

• explore osteoporosis medications (for me, it is the big question of whether someday I will be asked to consider taking Fosamax, which my mother took);
• describe alternative medications (this covers the gamut of supplements out there touting their bone health benefits);
• discuss hormones (another big question we middle age women face — whether to use hormone replacement therapy);
• explain how to assess your own gut health and understand how it impacts your bone health.

The final two chapters are dedicated to food and exercise — the two major lifestyle keys to healthy bones. I picked up some good reminders for myself in these chapters — mainly to keep up a raw food/real food diet as much as possible, and to keep up daily exercise.

I found this book highly accessible and readily applicable to my own life experience and the questions I have about bone health.  In particular, it helped me to understand some of the connections between how food is absorbed and bone is created and recreated in our bodies.  I would recommend this book to anyone who is having back problems or is worried about their future bone health.  This book will help you decide how to resolve your problem, and it will give you the information to ask much more detailed questions of the practitioners you may end up seeing for bone health.