BEER please!!! (boon-bane-bone) - Prax

Milk isn’t the only bone-building beverage: A beer may also help, say British doctors. It’s a good source of silicon, a mineral that is thought to stimulate collagen production, a building block in bone formation. In a preliminary study, doctors looked at 2847 people from a British osteoporosis study and found that men/women who consumed that most silicon – about 40mg a day – had the highest bone mineral density, a measure of bone health.

Silicon is rarely listed on nutrition labels, so it’s hard to tell how much we consume, says study author Jonathan Powell, a nutrition researcher at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. A 340ml beer has about 7 mg of silicon.

Not a drinker? This news is no reason to start, since excess alcohol consumption raises other health risks, (**mandha memory, liquid liver...**) including osteoporosis (bone fracture) itself. Dates, mangoes, melons, spinach, apples and some bottled mineral waters are also good sources of silicon.
Source : Reder's Digest (Mar 2005) & **-Prax