Our bone density begins declining earlier than you might think. But ensuring our diet is rich in certain nutrients can help to keep our skeletons strong.

Drinking milk will help you to grow strong bones. This is some of the first health advice many of us receive. As children, many of us were encouraged to finish our milk at break time with the promise that the calcium would help us to grow a strong and healthy skeleton.

But though this dairy-heavy advice is often seared onto our memories from an early age, what’s less talked about in my social circles now is just how common fragile bones are later in life – and how if we don’t protect our bones when we are younger, we open ourselves up to an increased risk of fractures.

Luckily, there is something we can do about it, whatever age we are. With a diet packed with the right nutrients, alongside staying active, we can all have healthier bones – and no, it’s not just about drinking more milk.

Our bone health is shaped decades before they start to show signs of frailty. The skeleton we carry in later life depends on the bone reserve we build during childhood and early adulthood, when bones grow stronger and denser before reaching their peak in early adulthood, says Kate Ward, a professor of global musculoskeletal health at the University of Southampton in the UK.

After that, we begin to lose bone density as we age. There are also around 500 million people worldwide with osteoporosis, a condition that weakens our bones, causing them to become thinner and more brittle. Conditions like osteopenia and osteoporosis are often silent diseases that show no symptoms until a potentially life-altering fracture occurs, explains Julie Thompson from the Royal Osteoporosis Society in the UK.

This is especially the case for hip fractures, of which more than 10 million occur globally per year in those aged over 55. The consequences of this can be dire, with fractures leading to complications such as pneumonia or heart attacks. In all, about 30% of patients over the age of 60 die within one year of a hip fracture – though other factors such as age and pre-existing conditions may also be involved.

As women age, they are particularly vulnerable to loss of bone density, especially during menopause – and they have a higher prevalence of osteoporosis. But men are affected too.

“Historically osteoporosis was considered a disease of women and that is because [more] men were dying in their 60s due to heart disease. They now live long enough to express osteoporosis,” says Bess Dawson-Hughes a professor of medicine at Tufts University who specialises in bone and muscle function.

So, what can we eat to ensure our bones stay strong?