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The Foods, Supplements & Oils to Support Bone Healing
March 22, 2024
If you want to help heal broken bones naturally, you want to follow a very specific diet, supplement regimen, lifestyle regimen, as well as use certain essential oils and natural treatments to help your body heal much faster. Following these simple bone-healing steps can really work.
Natural Methods for Bone Healing
1. The Bone-Building Diet
Let’s start with diet and the key nutrients you’ve got to be getting in your diet in order to help heal broken bones. No. 1, you need a lot of minerals, especially calcium and magnesium.
Calcium is an essential structural component of the skeleton, which makes it vital for both health and bone healing. That’s why a calcium deficiency can contribute to broken bones — and why eating more calcium foods can aid bone healing naturally.
The best calcium-rich foods are green leafy vegetables and raw fermented dairy products. Getting a lot of leafy greens like Swiss chard as well as broccoli in your diet is essential. Other foods packed with calcium — the main mineral that helps make up strong bones — include:
- Kale
- Spinach
- Arugula
- Yogurt or kefir
- Raw milk
- Sardines
In order for your body to even use calcium, you also have to have magnesium because research shows magnesium and calcium metabolism are closely related. In fact, “the intestinal absorption and the renal excretion of the two ions are interdependent.”
So in order to get the benefits of calcium-rich foods, you need to consume magnesium-rich foods as well. Some high-calcium foods are also high in magnesium, such as green leafy vegetables and raw fermented dairy products like goat milk kefir or raw goat cheese. Other magnesium foods include:
- Flaxseeds, chia seeds and pumpkin seeds
- Grass-fed beef
- Swiss chard
- Almonds
- Avocados
- Black beans
Also, you want to get foods that are high in zinc. Research published in the Saudi Medical Journal found that zinc supplementation caused a significant elevation of serum zinc and alkaline phosphatase activity, and in the double-blind, placebo-controlled, clinical trial, the X-rays assessed in the 30 patients administered zinc showed a significant progress in callus formation in cases compared to the controls.
Zinc foods are similar to calcium and magnesium foods, such grass-fed beef, pumpkin seeds, chia and flaxseeds.
Next, you want get loads of vitamin C. Many studies tout the benefits of vitamin C on bone healing.
In a study published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, researchers found that vitamin C “improved the mechanical resistance of the fracture callus in elderly rats.” They suggested that this may work as well in healing bone fractures in elderly humans.
Another rat study in the Archives of Orthopedic and Trauma Surgery found that the “vitamin C-supplemented group went through the stages of fracture healing faster compared with the control group.” These findings were confirmed by another rat study published in the Journal of International Medical Research.
Vitamin C foods include vegetable juices, orange juice, true oranges, lemons, bell peppers, kiwis, broccoli and asparagus.
Here are more foods that support bone health:
- vitamin D foods
- vitamin K foods
- high-protein foods
- prunes
- dried figs
- canned salmon
- plant milks
- tofu
- almonds and almond butter
- white canned beans
- cabbage
- okra
- soybeans
- nuts
- bread and fortified flour foods
- fish with edible bones like sardines
- fortified rice and oat drinks
- sesame seeds
- tahini
- pulses
- dried apricots
- raisins
Your diet should consist of a lot of veggies, some fruit, some organic meat, and some nuts and seeds, and that should be the bulk of your diet as you’re trying to heal and get all of those nutrients for building strong bones.
Now the foods you want to stay away from are foods that tend to be overly acidic, conventional meat and dairy products, and alcohol. You also want to stay away from excess sodium and excess sugar. Those will acidify your body and actually leach those minerals out of your body and cause your bone healing and growth to slow down.
2. Bone-Healthy Supplements
The top natural supplement for the treatment of broken bones is a vitamin D supplement. While the jury is still out on whether or not vitamin D supplementation actually leads to bone healing after a fracture, evidence suggests that a vitamin D deficiency often plays a role in broken bones. Thus, vitamin D appears to play a role in bone healing, at the very least indirectly.
If you have a broken bone, getting out in the sun is ideal because getting vitamin D directly from sunlight is really important for bone growth. Plus, you can detox your body with the sun at the same time.
Other supplements that promote bone healing include calcium and magnesium supplements (ideally, a magnesium chelate supplement). Other things that can help are a fish oil supplement and a green superfood powder. Fish oil benefits your health and bones because the omega-3 fatty acids present can reduce inflammation and speed the healing process.
Getting a green superfood that has beneficial spirulina and chlorella — along with other alkalizing fruits and vegetables — is very beneficial at healing broken bones as well.
3. Natural Physical Therapy
The next step in healing broken bones fast naturally is natural therapy, such as standing on a vibration platform. Studies that show that standing on a vibration platform increases bone density. Standing on a vibration platform for 20 minutes three times a day naturally helps increase your bone density — and does that without major impact.
4. Essential Oils
The next natural bone-healing method is to use essential oils. Three powerful essential oils for helping to heal broken bones are cypress essential oil, fir needle essential oil and helichrysum essential oil. Make a blend, and put this on your body five to six times daily, directly on the broken bone area.
Cypress oil really improves circulation in the area, speeding the healing process. Fir oil really works in helping repair the bone, and helichrysum helps in repairing damaged nerve tissue due its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties.
5. Acupuncture
Last but not least, getting acupuncture treatment is another beneficial practice for bone healing. We know acupuncture really works with your body’s meridians and different healing networks. It transforms where your body energy is utilized, supports your organs and repairs damaged bones.
In a study of Traditional Chinese Medicine on healing bone fractures published in Complementary Therapies in Medicine, acupuncture treatments sped up bone healing in patients with broken bones. A review of studies on the effects of acupuncture published in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine found similar results on the rats.
