My sweet neighbor Sandra was nimble for her 70 years, but one day she tripped over a rug and fell, breaking her hip. When I visited her in the hospital after she had surgery to fix the hip, she laughed at her own clumsiness and vowed that she’d soon be up and about.
She wasn’t. Her pain was severe and she had to rest a lot…then she developed pneumonia…and then she died. All from one simple fall in her own home.
Unfortunately, it’s not an unusual scenario. Every year, 220,000 women in the US break their hips—and in so doing, they double their risk of dying within the year. As for men, they’re less likely than women to fracture their hips…but their odds of dying soon afterward are even higher.
There’s something very simple you can do to reduce your chances of becoming such a sad statistic yourself, a recent study shows. Just eat more of a certain kind of fat…and less of another kind fat.
FATS VS. FRACTURES
Researchers already knew (as my readers do, too!) that certain dietary fats are good for cardiovascular and brain health. But they wanted to see whether fats also affected bone health—and fracture risk. To do so, they drew on data from the Women’s Health Initiative, a huge study that started in 1993. Participants periodically provided information about their health, diet, lifestyle and family medical history…gave blood samples…and/or underwent various tests, such as scans to measure bone mineral density.
Combing through this mountain of records, the researchers found 324 women who had fractured a hip at some point between 1993 and 2008. Then they selected an equal number of women who had not suffered a broken hip, matching the groups by various factors that influence fracture risk, such as age, ethnicity, geographic location (to account for vitamin D exposure) and use of hormone therapy.
To determine dietary fat consumption, the researchers didn’t use the participants’ own reports of what they ate, because such self-reporting can be notoriously inaccurate. Instead, they thawed the participants’ frozen blood samples and measured the various fatty acids in them, looking specifically at the red blood cells because these cells reflect dietary intake over the course of several months (not just days).
Next, the women were grouped into three categories (low, medium and high) based on their red blood cell levels of omega-3 fatty acids…omega-6 fatty acids…and the ratio between the two. Finally, after adjusting for other factors that influence bone health (smoking, exercise, weight, diabetes, etc.), the researchers calculated the hip fracture risk as it related to dietary fats. What they found…
Omega-3 fats: More was definitely better. Compared with women who had the lowest omega-3 levels, women with the highest omega-3 levels had a 45% lower hip fracture risk…and women with mid-level omega-3s had a 15% lower hip fracture risk. Particularly beneficial types of omega-3s included alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), found in flaxseed and walnuts…and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), found in fatty fish.
Omega-6 fats: With these fatty acids, less was better—particularly in terms of the ratio between omega-6s and omega-3s. Women with the lowest ratios of omega-6 to omega-3 had about half the hip fracture risk of women with the highest ratios of omega-6 to omega-3. Omega-6 fats are found in abundance in many margarines, corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, fatty red meats and various processed foods.
What’s behind the findings? As with so many health problems, it mostly comes down to inflammation. Chronic inflammation may disrupt the normal ongoing process of bone formation. Omega-3s are anti-inflammatory, decreasing the activity of inflammatory proteins called cytokines. In addition, omega-3s may directly and positively affect calcium absorption, further benefiting bones.
Omega-6s, in contrast, tend to promote inflammation. You can’t entirely eliminate omega-6s from your diet—and you wouldn’t want to, because they do play a crucial role in brain function as well as normal growth and development. However, problems arise when an overabundance of omega-6s overwhelm the omega-3s.
This study, because it used fatty acid content of the blood, cannot reveal the magic number of grams of omega-3 to shoot for each day, but it does highlight the importance of a healthful ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. Many experts suggest that an appropriate ratio is less than 4-to-1 or even 2-to-1. Don’t assume that you already meet this goal—the ratio of the typical American diet is about 16-to-1!
Bottom line: To protect your bones and reduce your fracture risk, reduce your consumption of omega-6 fats and increase consumption of foods rich in healthful omega-3s.