If you're female, postmenopausal and sedentary, you have three reasons to keep reading.Here's why: you're at increased risk for osteoporosis. Luckily, there's a few things you can do about it.

1. Gain weight: Yes, it's true. Tipping the scales will increase the load that your bones have to bear. In the world of bone making, load = growth. That said, I'm not advocating a bacchanal and binge fest. Being underweight, small-framed and light footed increases your risk for developing brittle bones. However, getting fat is not the best solution, considering the side effects (heart attack, stroke, diabetes...)So I repeat, although gaining weight will help with bone density, I do NOT recommend it. For the love of your body, don't pull out the kettle corn and start watching a Twilight Zone marathon.

2. Exercise: This, is by far, a better choice than trying to gain so much weight you can file for disability (a la Homer Simpson). Unlike obesity, exercise can stimulate bone growth without causing 50 adverse side effects. All exercise is not created equal, though. You need to make sure it's "weight-bearing." Examples include running, walking and weight-lifting, all of which put stress on your bones and lead to increased growth.

3. Eat right: Milk, cheese, yogurt, green leafy vegetables (marijuana is not a green leafy vegetable), nuts and various beans contain calcium, essential for bone formation and maintenance. If you're part cow and like to graze, you're already set up to succeed. Just go for the kale, collards and spinach. If you're not into the greens try dairy but make sure you stay away from the frozen, creamy stuff (putting it on top of a split banana doesn't make it less fattening). If your diet doesn't take you far enough, make sure to add a calcium supplement, especially if you're pregnant or over 50.

Check out these resources for more information on osteoporosis and bone health:

NIH Site
Osteoporosis in Men

Nature hasn’t taken part in the equal rights movement—this includes an equal right to disease. According to a new study by the CDC, women in America make up 60% of all new cases of diabetes. Sorry men. According to Dr. James Anderson, a professor of medicine and clinical nutrition at the University of Kentucky, obesity is one of the major factors behind this alarming statistic. In fact, he points out that "80% of people with type II diabetes are obese" (emphasis mine).

Anderson adds that “Fifty-five percent of women in the U.S are considered overweight and 35 percent are considered obese. So basically, we’re talking about 60 million women.”

Anderson sums it up like this: “…inactivity puts women at a greater risk for obesity, which is often a direct precursor to diabetes…For every one percent of her body weight a woman gains after high school, her risk for heart disease increases about five percent. For every same one percent gained, that woman’s risk of developing diabetes increases by 10 percent. In other words, if you’ve gained weight since high school (and that’s probably pretty much everyone), your risk for heart disease and diabetes has increased.”

And how do we combat this? Simple: get off the couch, chair, bench, rock, or whatever you’re sitting on and start moving! Diabetes is serious business.

It's bad enough that the word "inevitable" is part of the English language. It's even worse if you use it often, still worse if you believe it. But what if some seemingly "inevitable" things were, in fact, evitable? Would a missing two-letter prefix be enough to change reality?

You might be too hung up by the word “evitable” to consider my question. But, there is such a word. In fact, it’s just as real as “maritorius”, “macaronic” or “mugwump.”

But we half-empty types seem to prefer uglier “realities”—things we supposedly can’t avoid. “Oh it’s just inevitable. His dad had it, his grandpa had it, his poodle has it. How can he NOT die of a heart attack?” Now, really. Let’s give belief a chance to make things right. There’s no changing age, sex or family history. Okay. But consider:

-Fat intake
-Blood pressure
-Smoking
-Physical activity
-Stress

All of these things are changeable (at least to some extent). But there’s still some of us who would rather remain helpless. It’s literally a "dogged" way of thinking, and one with consequences. Martin Seligman discovered this in the 1960's while studying conditioning in dogs. He "accidentally" discovered what he later called "learned helplessness", an extreme form of "I can't" behavior.

Initially, Seligman's dogs didn't start off feeling or thinking that they were helpless (hence the term "learned"). It was only after they got shocked repeatedly and couldn’t escape that they decided to give up. The twist, though, is that Seligman then made it so they COULD escape. He even showed them how to escape. Yet, the next time around the dogs just sat there. They had come to believe in the “inevitable.”

There was a way out for them, though. For the dogs it was getting up and walking to the other side of a shuttlebox. For the rest of us, it's believing that the possibility of a healthy life is something worth believing in. Then we got to get up and walk to the other side of the shuttlebox.

It seems that now you can keep your brain and use it too. At least that’s what researchers are saying about exercise and Alzheimer’s disease, the number one cause of dementia and the number six cause of death in the U.S. Although the results are preliminary, a number of studies suggest the exercise can help to prevent or even slow down Alzheimer’s by decreasing the amount of cortical loss associated with the disease. Translation: staying fit may keep your noggin’ from shrinking.

No one knows exactly how this works. It’s not even clear whether exercise simply prevents Alzheimer’s, decreases its impact, or both. There may even be some mysterious 3rd variable involved—perhaps better educated people are more likely to exercise their bodies AND their brains. This could account for both higher levels of fitness and lower rates of dementia. Kind of throws the “dumb jock” myth out the window, doesn’t it?

The evidence isn’t limited to humans. Laboratory mice that hit the gym more often have been shown to develop increased growth in the hippocampus, one of the main memory centers ravaged by Alzheimer’s.

As with everything worth knowing, the answer is usually that it’s "all of the above." Exercise and education about its benefits go hand in hand, that’s for sure. But exercise can also increase blood flow to the brain and keep that 3lb oxygen glutton happy…and a happy brain is a non-shrinking one.

Those of you who exercise know that it also keeps you happier. You also have the energy and drive to and are thus more likely to do things like Read, wRite, and do aRithmetic. That’s the “Three R’s” that educators say we can’t do without. Maybe those educators are right after all.