Flesh and Bone are not the only things necessary for pain-free, agile movement. You need strong ligaments to keep muscles in place. You need minerals and water to feed your muscles. If you removed all flesh from your skeleton it would fall into a heap on the floor. Muscles and ligaments support your sitting, standing, and walking. In a perfect world, we would all eat nutrient-rich, fresh organic fruits and vegetables. We might fast one day weekly on dried figs and low fat goat’s milk–excellent sources of potassium, calcium, magnesium, and necessary minerals. We would spend at least thirty minutes daily in sunshine for vitamin D. We would exercise daily walking and swimming. We would think nice thoughts and have no worries. For the rest of us, there are nutritional supplements to make up for real life.

Minerals are difficult to absorb even under the best of conditions. We absorb nutrients depending on several important factors–age, health, food combinations to name a few things. People over 30, whose eating habits are irregular, and who work under stress lack adequate digestive enzymes. Getting the enzymes in pills is second best to having your own. That’s why a few new supplements such as Active-C from Vitamin Shoppe combine vitamin C, a little calcium, magnesium, and zinc along with pepper to increase digestion. The pepper increases acid, which helps digestion. You might also take your vitamins and minerals with orange juice: It’s acidic.

If digestion is weak, pills pass right through. Some minerals like dolomite, said to be a source of calcium, are made from rocks and mountains. Did you ever try to eat an Italian mountain? It does not work. Taking pills is not enough. For one thing you have to have the right combination of nutrients and the right ph conditions in your digestive tract. Some people, for convenience, bolt their vitamins and minerals with coffee or tea–both diuretic. That reduces absorption. Why take a tonic with a cleanser? It would be like waxing the floor then scrubbing it with bleach.

I can’t promise to know all the best supplements for Flesh and Bone. I myself don’t like swallowing too many pills. So I schedule some with or between meals, with or without acid foods, depending on how they should be absorbed.

With Calcium think Magnesium, Zinc and Acid Foods

I asked my pretty Florida chiropractor, Iris–shapely in jeans, high heels, and long black hair–about enjoying cafe Cubano and taking calcium. Most people know that coffee leaches calcium from bones. She said, take calcium and magnesium and vitamin C regularly. Supplements are not like drugs that work powerfully for a short period of time. Minerals need to build up over time in your body. Take them daily. I avoid taking minerals along with coffee. Mornings I often have fruit, tea and/or coffee. They are all cleansing. With them, I may take cleansing herbs like neem, used to fight bacteria, virus, parasites, and itchy skin conditions. It’s a nice rejuvenative cleanser you can take long term as long as you have acidophilus or yogurt in your diet. Other good cleanser might include a source of chlorophyll like one from Puritan Pride made from copper.

Good sources of calcium are not necessarily dairy products. Lot’s of people–some say most people–have dairy allergies. Leafy greens offer lots of calcium in an easily absorbable form. So are sesame seeds. Ayurvedic doctors recommend a handful of raw sesame seeds chewed daily as a source of calcium. I enjoy eating a spoonful but you might add them to salad, soup or grains. Chinese doctors recommend a very nourishing, beautifying combination of 1 cup each of blanched raw black sesame seeds and chopped walnuts and 1 cup raw honey. They recommend blending the ingredients and baking the mixture at around 200 degrees for hours, but you can make it without cooking. Cooking damages the honey. You might put it into an airtight glass jar and keep it in the sun. Enjoy a couple of tablespoons daily.