Stop smoking, and exercise 30 minutes a day, every day. Your bones will join your heart and lungs in thanking you.

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RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—“Use it or lose it” is a phrase we associate with muscles, but it’s true for bone as well. Bone, like muscle, becomes stronger when it’s stressed. Recently, a large Norwegian study revealed just how much stronger.

THE DETAILS: As part a study conducted at the University of Tromso in Norway, nearly 8,000 men and women aged 24 to 84 years had their bone mineral density (BMD) measured at two sites in their forearms in 1994 and 1995. In 2001, the test was repeated. As expected, the researchers found that BMD was significantly higher in the third or fourth decade of life than it was at old age. But they also found that the difference between the levels at peak and at old age varied significantly depending on the lifestyles of the participants.

Lifetime bone loss was 10 to 12 percent less in nonsmoking, physically active men than in smoking, inactive men. In women, the corresponding difference was 11 to 20 percent. Those numbers translate to a fracture risk among the inactive group that’s 69 percent higher in men and 85 percent higher in women, compared to the active folks. “Physically active” was defined as spending 3 or more hours of light activity (not sweating or out of breath) per week and 3 or more hours of hard physical activity (sweating, out-of-breath) per week.

WHAT IT MEANS: The healthy behaviors that help you in so many other ways—quitting smoking, exercising, and keeping active—will also reward you with a strong skeleton as you get older.

Here’s how you can maintain your bone strength as you age: