This website is about restoring and maintaining your bone density. That sounds good, but why should you care about your bone density? Broken bones hurt and can take a long time to heal, so we need to have strong bones. It is more important than that though. Your bones do a lot of critical things, so let’s learn a few things about the bones in your body.
Facts About Bones
How many bones in the body? There are 212 total bones in the human body – 206 regular bones plus the 3 ossicles in each ear.
What is the smallest bone in the body? The stapes, one of the ossicles in each ear, are the smallest bones. Along with the hammer and anvil, they turn pressure on the ear drum into the nerve signals to the brain that we interpret as sound.
What is the longest bone in the body? The femur, or thigh bone, is the longest bone.
What Do Bones Do In the Body?
It is surprising all the the things that our bones do for us. We have already talked about the stapes and the other ossicles in the ear, so our bones play a big part in our ability to hear. What else do they do for us?
Body Structure and Movement
The most obvious thing that the bones do is provide the the structural elements of the body. The bones are hooked together with cartilage, tendons and ligaments forming a joint, so that the muscles can then move the bones allowing us to walk, run and manipulate objects.
Protection
What do bones protect? The bones provide protection for the softer, more critical organs. Specifically, the bones in the skull protect the brain, the ribs protect the lungs and heart, and the vertebrae provide protection for the nerves in the spinal cord.
The ability of these bones to protect the organs is amazing when you consider that they also allow for movement. The ribs move to allow for the lungs to expand and contract in breathing. The spinal cord is one of the most fragile parts of the body yet the vertebrae allow for us to bend and twist in just about any direction.
Most people think that the skull is solid. It is actually made up of several bones that hinge off of each other to allow for the skull to expand and contract. In massage-related fields, the expanding and contracting of the skull is called the craniosacral rhythm.
Manufacture Red Blood Cells
Bones also protect the bone marrow. What is bone marrow? Bone marrow is a fatty, jelly-like material in the core of the bones. The marrow in the heads of the long bones, like the femur, manufactures the red blood cells that carry the oxygen in our blood and the white blood cells that fight off infection.
Storage
What do bones store? The bones store calcium. I think everyone knows that calcium is needed to make strong bones. It also has a variety of other uses in the body. Calcium is used to carry signals in the nerves, and those signals are what trigger muscle contractions, so calcium is necessary for you to able to move and for your heart to pump blood.
Calcium is also used to buffer acidic foods. Our diet has become more and more acidic as we eat more and more processed and packaged food. I believe this is where we can make the biggest impact on our bone density. When we get back to eating more natural foods, vegetables, and drinking water instead of soft drinks and energy drinks, most of our bone density issues will go away.
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and I do not give medical advice. These statements on bone density are my belief and have not been reviewed by the FDA or another other government organization.