Maintaining a steady dietary intake of calcium offers the greatest protection against broken hips in elderly women, and it also protects against forearm fractures early in menopause, new research suggests.

Calcium intake strongly protected against hip fractures in the more than 9,000 post-menopausal women who were examined, according to researchers from Finland.

The researchers tracked and analyzed the amount of dairy product in the diet and used the information as a measure of the participants’ calcium intake. The average calcium intake was 827 milligrams per day and remained essentially the same as the women aged during the 15-year study.

The findings were presented recently during the 29th annual meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.