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The Bone Density Solution’s 14 Habits, Checked Against the Evidence

ByBones After 50 Editorial Team

Short answer: the fourteen habits in The Bone Density Solution are mostly sensible, a few are well supported, and several rest on weaker evidence than the book implies. We read the whole PDF (the publisher sent us a free review copy; see our full review) and then looked up what the book cites for each habit. This is what we found.

Not medical advice. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist before starting any supplement, especially if you take blood thinners, thyroid, blood-sugar or blood-pressure medication, or have kidney disease. Never stop a prescription because of a book.

The 14 habits at a glance

The book’s Part 6 lists these as its daily protocol: calcium 1,200 mg, vitamin D3 2,000 IU, vitamin K2 180 mcg, magnesium 320 mg (women) or 420 mg (men), a probiotic or fermented food, omega-3 1,000 mg, curcumin and/or green tea, plenty of fruit and vegetables, plant protein at every meal, milk thistle 400 mg, ashwagandha 250 mg, 15 to 20 minutes of weight-bearing exercise, 20 to 45 minutes of brisk walking or low-impact cardio, and 15 minutes of stretching.

Habit What the evidence supports Our read
Calcium 1,200 mg 1,200 mg is the US recommended daily amount for women over 50, counted from food and supplements together (NIH Office of Dietary Supplements). Calcium supplements, unlike food calcium, are linked to kidney stones. Right target, but get it from food first. Do not stack a full 1,200 mg supplement on top of a calcium-rich diet.
Vitamin D3 2,000 IU The recommended amount is 600 IU (800 IU after 70); the tolerable upper limit is 4,000 IU a day (NIH). 2,000 IU sits inside that limit. Reasonable. A blood test tells you whether you need it.
Vitamin K2 180 mcg 180 mcg of MK-7 is the dose used in a 3-year trial of 244 healthy postmenopausal women, which found less decline in bone density at the lumbar spine and femoral neck, but not at the total hip (Knapen 2013; the authors are affiliated with a vitamin K company). There is no official recommended amount for K2. Plausible, not proven for fractures. The book does not mention that vitamin K interacts with warfarin. If you take it, ask your doctor first.
Magnesium 320 / 420 mg Those figures are the recommended daily amount from all sources, food included. The upper limit for magnesium from supplements alone is 350 mg a day (NIH). Fine from food. As a supplement, a man taking 420 mg would exceed the supplement limit. Citrate is better absorbed than oxide (Lindberg 1990).
Probiotic / fermented food The book’s reference for this habit is a general review of probiotic health benefits, not a bone study. Harmless for most people; the bone benefit is a hypothesis.
Omega-3 1,000 mg One trial: 79 sedentary postmenopausal women, 24 weeks. Bone density rose only in the group that did aerobic exercise and took omega-3, not in omega-3 alone or exercise alone (Tartibian 2011). Promising, single small trial. The 15 to 19% figure the book quotes is not in the abstract.
Curcumin / green tea The curcumin reference is a study in rats whose ovaries were removed. Green tea is backed by a review (Shen 2009). Animal evidence for curcumin; weak human evidence for both.
Fruit and vegetables (antioxidants) The specific antioxidants named (rutin, delphinidin, coenzyme Q10) are supported by rat and mouse studies. Eating more plants is good advice; the bone claims for individual compounds are animal-only.
Plant protein at every meal The reference is an observational study of amino-acid intake in twins (Jennings 2016): an association, not a trial. Enough total protein helps bone and muscle. “Plant is better for bone” is not shown.
Milk thistle 400 mg None of the references for it is a bone study (a dosing article and a supplement-information site). The book itself says to avoid it with fibroids, endometriosis or hormone-sensitive cancers. No bone evidence offered. Skip unless your doctor suggests it.
Ashwagandha 250 mg The references are a general overview of the herb and a dosing article, not bone studies. The book warns of interactions with thyroid, blood-sugar and blood-pressure drugs. No bone evidence offered; real interaction risk.
Weight-bearing, walking, stretching Loading bone is the best-supported habit in the list. The trials that moved bone density used heavier loading than this protocol describes. Do these, then add load. See walking for bone health.

What we found in the book’s references

The book ends with about seventy references. Reading them is worthwhile, and not all of them hold the weight the text puts on them:

  • A retracted review. The reference for vitamin K2 and osteoporosis (Iwamoto, Takeda and Sato, Current Pharmaceutical Design, 2004) was retracted by the journal in 2021 over concerns about the data it relied on. That was the year after the book was written, so it is not the author’s error, but it means that citation no longer stands.
  • Animal studies standing in for people. Four of the cited papers are on rats or mice (curcumin, rutin, delphinidin, strontium), and another tests coenzyme Q10 in cells and in rats whose ovaries were removed.
  • A heart-disease study used for a bone claim. One pillar of the case against conventional milk, the A1 beta-casein argument, rests on a New Zealand paper (Laugesen and Elliott, 2003) that correlates A1 beta-casein with heart disease and type 1 diabetes across countries. It is not about bone and it is not a trial.
  • Observational studies read as proof. The phytate paper (López-González 2013) followed 157 postmenopausal women for 12 months and used a urine marker, not food intake. The alcohol paper (Sommer 2013) is a cohort of 300 Finnish women, which found higher bone density in women drinking more than three drinks a week than in abstainers. That is an association, not a reason to start drinking.
  • Websites alongside journals. The list also includes consumer sites (Mercola, Dr. Axe, Healthline, Wikipedia, a Q&A site for the bone-versus-steel comparison) and a supplement seller’s page on boron.

One reference the book reports accurately is Harris and Dawson-Hughes (1994): in 205 postmenopausal women, high caffeine intake (over 450 mg a day) went with more bone loss only in women whose calcium intake was low, below the median of 744 mg a day. That matches what the book says.

Where the book overreaches on medication

The drug chapter says nobody knows how effective bisphosphonates are because long-term studies have not been done. That is not right. In the Fracture Intervention Trial, alendronate cut vertebral fractures even in a subgroup of 3,737 women with T-scores between -1.6 and -2.5: relative risk 0.40 for clinical and 0.57 for radiographic vertebral fractures (Quandt 2005). Jaw osteonecrosis, which the book mentions, is real but rare in people treated for osteoporosis: the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research estimated between 1 in 10,000 and fewer than 1 in 100,000 patient-treatment years (Khosla 2007), while noting the true rate may be higher. Our comparison of osteoporosis drugs covers when medication makes sense.

What to take from this

If you are in the osteopenia range, the useful core of the book is plain: eat enough calcium and protein, check your vitamin D, move more and add load, and cut back on heavily processed food. You do not need the full supplement list to do that. If you are weighing the book itself, our Bone Density Solution review goes through what is inside, what it leaves out and who it suits. For the lifestyle side without a purchase, see osteopenia treatment without drugs.

References we checked

  • Tartibian B, et al. Long-term aerobic exercise and omega-3 supplementation modulate osteoporosis through inflammatory mechanisms in post-menopausal women. Nutr Metab 2011;8:71. PubMed
  • Knapen MH, et al. Three-year low-dose menaquinone-7 supplementation helps decrease bone loss in healthy postmenopausal women. Osteoporos Int 2013;24:2499-507. PubMed
  • Iwamoto J, et al. Effects of vitamin K2 on osteoporosis (retracted). Curr Pharm Des 2004;10:2557-76; retraction 2021;27:2325. PubMed
  • Harris SS, Dawson-Hughes B. Caffeine and bone loss in healthy postmenopausal women. Am J Clin Nutr 1994;60:573-8. PubMed
  • Sommer I, et al. Alcohol consumption and bone mineral density in elderly women. Public Health Nutr 2013;16:704-12. PubMed
  • López-González AA, et al. Protective effect of myo-inositol hexaphosphate (phytate) on bone mass loss in postmenopausal women. Eur J Nutr 2013;52:717-26. PubMed
  • Laugesen M, Elliott R. Ischaemic heart disease, type 1 diabetes, and cow milk A1 beta-casein. N Z Med J 2003;116:U295. PubMed
  • Lindberg JS, et al. Magnesium bioavailability from magnesium citrate and magnesium oxide. J Am Coll Nutr 1990;9:48-55. PubMed
  • Zheng D, et al. Coenzyme Q10 promotes osteoblast proliferation and differentiation and protects against ovariectomy-induced osteoporosis. Mol Med Rep 2018;17:400-7. PubMed
  • Quandt SA, et al. Effect of alendronate on vertebral fracture risk in women with bone mineral density T scores of -1.6 to -2.5 at the femoral neck: the Fracture Intervention Trial. Mayo Clin Proc 2005;80:343-9. PubMed
  • Khosla S, et al. Bisphosphonate-associated osteonecrosis of the jaw: report of a task force of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. J Bone Miner Res 2007;22:1479-91. PubMed
  • NIH Office of Dietary Supplements fact sheets: calcium, vitamin D, magnesium, vitamin K. ods.od.nih.gov

Disclosure: we received a free review copy of The Bone Density Solution from the publisher and earn a commission if you buy it through links on our review page. This article contains no affiliate links. See our affiliate disclosure, medical disclaimer and editorial policy.

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