Diet plays an important role in the treatment of osteoporosis. To begin with, the patient should adopt a raw?juice diet for about five days. In this regimen, he should take juices of fresh fruits and vegetables, diluted with water on 50:50 basis, every two hours during the day. Fruits and vegetables which can be used for juices are orange, lemon, pineapple, papaya, green leafy vegetables, red beet and carrot. A warm-water enema should be taken daily during this period to cleanse the bowels.

After the raw juice diet, the patient may gradually embark upon a well-balanced diet consisting of seeds, nuts, and grains, vegetables and fruits. The emphasis should be on mineral-rich foods such as whole grains, seeds, nuts, cooked and raw vegetables and fruits, milk and milk products such as homemade cottage cheese.

Foods rich in calcium, magnesium, potassium and silicon will be specially beneficial in the treatment of this disorder. These foods are green vegetables, cabbage, carrots, fruits and berries of all kinds, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries. Sesame seeds and sunflower seeds are excellent foods for use in this disease.

The patient should also take liberal quantities of foods rich in lactic acid, sour milk products, oats, barely, millet and rice.

The patient should avoid large meals and overeating. He should eat slowly and chew his food extremely well. He should avoid tea, coffee, flesh foods, white sugar and white flour products, processed, refined and denatured foods. Smoking and alcoholic beverages are to be completely forbidden.

The use of pineapple is considered an effective remedy for keeping the bones strong. Dr. Jeanne Freeland-Graves, Professor of nutrition at the University of Texas at Austin, advises regular drinking of pineapple juice or eating other foods high in the trace mineral manganese to keep the 'bones strong. Manganese, like boron, is involved in bone metabolism. In a study, Dr. Freeland-Graves discovered that women with osteoporosis had about one-third less manganese in their blood than healthy women. Further, when given manganese, the diseased women absorbed twice as much, showing that their bodies needed it.

The patient should undertaker regular physical exercise both for prevention and treatment of osteoporosis. Exercises which put stress on long bones such as walking, jogging and bicycling will be very beneficial.