“If we happen to make the right food choices – it’s just totally a fluke.
A lot of people are just hoping for the best.”
A 50 year-old woman reflecting on her food choices for bone health.
Welcome to our website!
Who are we?
Forty-four middle-aged women guided the content of this site, and it reflects their life-stage issues. Eight of us from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada formed a collaborative working group to develop this website. We included 3 community women (professionals in their own fields), 3 registered dietitians, one research assistant (a former registered dietitian), and one research investigator (a registered dietitian). We incorporated input from 36 women who participated in 6 focused discussion groups.
What is this website about?
Our goal with this website is to provide you with basic ideas that will help you increase the attention you give to your bones. Although the website was designed by women (40-55 years) with a focus on assisting middle-aged women to make informed lifestyle choices to benefit their bone health, the information provided can apply to almost any adult. So, share the site with your daughters, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, friends, health care providers, and the men in your life, too! We recognize the importance of medications when appropriate, however we have taken a preventive approach to bone health, rather than a treatment approach. If you have been diagnosed with osteoporosis, we recommend that you first consult your physician for referral to specific nutrition and exercise advice. If you are uncertain about the health of your bones, then talk to your physician.
Our simple website has 5 pages: Home, Food, Exercise, Supplements, and Tips & Recipes. Although it is not exhaustive in content or in links, you can consider it your “one-stop shop” for starting to take better care of your bones. On the Home page, we tell you our story behind the website. On each of the Food, Exercise and Supplements pages you will find a narrative from one of our community women about why the topic is important to her. The narratives are followed by basic information and ideas, and the final section provides links to reliable sites related to each topic. Through the narratives, we wanted to share with you the voices of other women in midlife. We hope that you will find inspiration in the narratives and this will encourage you to read on and feel motivated to take small and manageable steps toward caring more for your bones, in the broader context of caring for your holistic health. On the Healthy Tips page, we have provided ideas for steps that you can take to support your bone health.
Why did we create this website?
The idea for this website came from three areas of concern:
- Studies show that women do not meet the current recommended dietary intakes for two key nutrients for bone health – calcium and vitamin D – and women are not getting enough exercise on a daily basis. We want women to take small actions in their day-to-day activities that will help their bones.
- Nutrition education resources are often developed with good intention, but without full involvement of the end users of the resource. We actively engaged end users throughout the development process of our website and print resources.
- Research on bone health has been focused on younger women and post-menopausal women. Women between the ages of 40-55 years have been understudied, and we wanted to hear their stories.
How was this website developed?
Six focused discussion groups were conducted with middle-aged women from different socioeconomic situations in the metropolitan Vancouver area to learn how bone health is considered in their day-to-day activities. We also explored what types of information and resources they valued that would help them take action to benefit their bone health.
Our working group of eight middle-aged women incorporated findings from the discussion groups to develop a print resource and this website. By taking a preventive approach, we have provided ideas that almost any woman can do to support her bone health.
What is unique about this website?
This website offers the power of the women’s narratives to hopefully help motivate you to adopt long-term behaviours that support your bone health, and your overall health. We have kept the website simple. There are several comprehensive and reliable websites for bone health, however each provides content guided by their own organization’s perspective. We have provided links to some of the best of those websites on each of the Food, Exercise, and Supplements pages. Consider this website your anchor to a range of other bone-related websites. Bookmark this website as your place to visit to learn about what you can do to support your bone health each and every day.
Finally…we would like you to complete our short survey. Just click on Feedback Survey in the menu near the bottom of each page. Your feedback is very important to us! Your comments will be valuable in determining the usefulness of the website. When you click on the Feedback Survey link, you will leave this website and be taken to an independent survey site called Survey Monkey. Your identity will be kept anonymous (i.e. we will not obtain any identifying email addresses or other contact information). By completing the survey, we will assume you have granted us consent to use your anonymous feedback. You may refuse to answer any of the questions. We recommend that you bookmark this website before leaving to complete the survey.
Enjoy your visit! We hope you will take a small action to benefit your bones, today and every day.
Page last updated: May 20, 2010
Please note: Some of the information on our website is available for download as a pdf file. These files require Adobe Acrobat Reader to be viewed. Please review the information on downloading and using Acrobat Reader software, available at: http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/ .
The information we have provided on this website is intended to provide current and accurate information to the general public. It is not intended to provide personal medical advice, which should be obtained from a physician. We cannot accept any liability for the decisions you make based on the information on this website. Links to all the organizations found on our site are provided solely as an informational service to our visitors. We are not responsible for the content of any organization’s web pages found at these links.
