Osteoporosis and nutrition – a paleopathological insight

Abstract

The association of osteoporosis and nutrition has long been documented, and nutrition is acknowledged as a major risk factor for bone loss, affecting bone health in distinct ways. Both biomedicine and anthropology (or, more precisely, paleopathology) have strived to fully understand the contribution of diet to bone health, especially the relationship between the physiological economy of calcium and bone maintenance. Taking this into consideration, the present article is intended to summarize and comment the main empirical contributions of paleopathology to the body of knowledge on bone health, specifically the relation between bone loss and nutrition.