As you age your bones and joints can deteriorate leading to Osteoporosis and Arthritis. There are many simple ways to help prevent these health conditions including adding extra manganese to your diet.

• Exercise. Stay active by doing weight bearing exercises such as walking, dancing, stair climbing, gardening, weight training
• Diet. Add more vegetables, fruit and non-farmed fish or tinned sardines/mackerel (avoid tuna from Thailand). Choose organic eggs and meat. Limit sugar, refined carbohydrates and processed foods
• Water. Always choose spring, filtered or alkaline water over tap water

Supplements

• Vitamin D. Sunshine on your face and upper body is the best way to get your daily dose, if this is not an option you can supplement with Vitamin D3.
• Calcium. This mineral is also needed for bone health and can be supplemented by diet.
• Manganese. This trace mineral is essential for strong bones, joints and connective tissue formation. Manganese is found in many foods but only 5% is actually absorbed by the body making supplementation an important choice for those with arthritis and osteoporosis.

Benefits of Manganese

• Helps build bone
• Helps create and repair the cartilage in joints
• Helps improve bone density

Manganese helps your body in the following ways:

• Bone. Manganese enhances your body’s production of mucopolysaccarides an essential part of bone formation. Manganese helps the body utilize calcium and SOD both needed to create healthy bone density.
• Cartilage formation. Manganese in needed for the body to produce proteglycans that are necessary to bind moisture to the collagen that helps cushions joints. Proteglycans are also responsible for creating cartilage.
• Enhances SOD (superoxide dismutase). This antioxidant enzyme prevents damage to inflamed joints by reducing inflammation. SOD works with manganese to repair bone and connective tissue. SOD also helps fight free radicals that create cellular damage that causes inflammation, aging and disease.

The body only stores 10% of manganese in bones, kidney, liver and pancreas. Stress, medication, bone or joint issues such as arthritis and osteoporosis can reduce your manganese stores. Those who have arthritis have been shown to have low levels of SOD. A deficiency of manganese can cause malformation of bones, loss of cartilage and bone weakness.