Total Health Breakthroughs: Free Natural Health Newsletter and Alternative Health Articles

Osteoporosis is a natural, inevitable consequence of aging. There’s really nothing you can do to prevent it. Fortunately, modern pharmaceuticals can help.

That’s what Big Pharma wants you to believe, anyway.

As with so many other health topics, there is a lot of misinformation floating around about osteoporosis.

Unfortunately, most people just don’t understand how bones really work. That means they can’t understand how osteoporosis really works. That, in turn, makes them vulnerable to the swill Big Pharma is selling.

The truth is that most osteoporosis treatments are unnecessary, and several are downright harmful. Osteoporosis is largely preventable through simple lifestyle changes that you should make anyway. Good bone health is simply a consequence of good health.

Taking care of your body is easier than it’s made out to be. The problem is sorting through all of the information that’s out there to separate the sheep from the goats. Fortunately, that’s my job.

In Friday’s article I explained how bones really work. Today I will tell you how osteoporosis really works, and how to avoid it the natural way. But before I do that, let’s review the leading treatments that you should definitely NOT be using.

The Dangers of Hormonal Replacement Therapy (HRT)

Last time I told you that up to 80% of osteoporosis patients are women. For that reason, osteoporosis was long regarded as a woman’s disease. Researchers knew that it was most common in elderly women. They also knew that women’s hormonal levels normally decrease with age. Studies showed a correlation between estrogen levels and bone density. Why not treat osteoporosis by replacing lost hormones?

It makes sense. However, it’s not a good idea for the same reason that you don’t flip the main circuit breaker to turn off the bedside lamp. Hormones are part of the body’s master control system. They are involved in osteoporosis. But they’re involved in a lot of other things, too. You just can’t mess with the master controls without getting unintended side effects.

Sure enough, the first large-scale test of HRT had some shocking results. The Women’s Health Initiative followed over 16,000 women in a randomized, placebo-controlled trial. They found that HRT did slightly lower the risk of fractures. It also significantly raised the risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, breast cancer, and pulmonary emboli.¹

That frightening finding led to the creation of so-called bioidentical HRT (BHRT). BHRT is marketed as a safer alternative to traditional HRT. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to support that claim.

Some believe that BHRT may even be riskier. The hormones come from the same sources (often pregnant horse urine), but the process of making “bioidentical” hormones introduces the potential for error.

Further, the science behind the process is suspect at best. Hormonal levels normally vary throughout the day, making accurate measurement nearly impossible. Allegedly individual treatments are in fact random and arbitrary. It’s not clear what good this does, but there is no reason to think it is safer.

In short, stay away from HRT. The risks simply outweigh the possible benefits.

The Newfound Dangers of Calcium Supplements

Another of the most commonly prescribed treatments for osteoporosis is a calcium supplement. This, too, is a logical move. Replacing lost calcium should restore depleted bone density, right?

Wrong. There are a few problems with that idea. The first is bioavailability. That’s a big word that simply refers to the amount of a drug that actually makes it where it’s supposed to go. No drug has 100% bioavailability. With most forms of calcium, you absorb less than half of what you ingest.

Further, calcium is important in many parts of the body, not just in the bones. (That’s why it gets taken from the bones in the first place.) That means that a lot of the calcium you do absorb goes other places. And that’s where it can cause problems.

In 1998, researchers in New Zealand began the Auckland Calcium Fracture Study. For years they followed almost 1,500 postmenopausal women to see if taking a daily calcium supplement would decrease the risk of fracture. Their findings were disappointing. Bone density among women taking calcium was only 1-2% better than among women not taking calcium. There was no effect on fracture prevention.

That’s not all they found, though. Troublingly, the women taking calcium suffered more heart attacks than controls. Calcium supplements may actually put your heart at risk.

In light of these findings, exactly two weeks ago today, the lead researchers involved in the study called for an end to calcium supplementation as a treatment for osteoporosis.² As with HRT, they concluded that the risks outweigh the benefits.

Bad Statistics and Worse Medicine

Both HRT and calcium supplementation seem like good ideas to treat osteoporosis. So why don’t they work?

It’s because they aren’t the cause of the disease. They are only associated with it. As statisticians like to say, “Correlation is not causation.” That means that the relationship between two things does not necessarily tell you that one causes the other. For example, a rooster always crows around sunup. But the rooster does not cause the sun to rise.

In the same way, neither low estrogen nor low calcium causes osteoporosis. There is a relationship. But treating osteoporosis by artificially increasing estrogen and calcium levels is like kidnapping the rooster to get a few more hours of sleep.

Osteoporosis, like so many other diseases, is an adaptive response to poor conditions. Your body is an intelligent machine that learns from experience and adapts to demand. It gets better at doing whatever you regularly ask it to do.

Osteoporosis is not an inevitable consequence of aging. It is associated with aging because aging is associated with inactivity and improper nutrition. Those hidden factors are what statisticians call confounds. They suggest relationships that aren’t true.

The true causes of osteoporosis are inactivity and improper nutrition. Genetic risk plays a role, but osteoporosis is your body’s adaptive response to poor conditions. Your body doesn’t want to give up bone density. But if you’re not getting the minerals you need in your diet, it will begrudgingly give up the “excess” in the bones.

Conditioning your body to low activity levels tells it that it can afford to skimp on bone density in order to make ends meet. It makes the hard choice and sacrifices whatever it can spare to supply calcium metabolism and other mineral needs.

Preventing Osteoporosis the Natural Way

As I said before, your body is an intelligent machine that adapts to the demands you place on it. Osteoporosis is an adaptive response to poor conditions. To reverse that process, you just have to change those conditions to make it a maladaptive response. Your body will change accordingly.

First, you need to make sure that you are getting plenty of the nutrients you need. The two most critical nutrients for bone health are calcium and vitamin D.

Calcium comes from foods like dairy products, nuts and seeds, and dark leafy greens. The NIH recommendation is between 1,000 and 1,500 mg of calcium per day. Some sources advocate for up to 2,000 mg per day. Either way, most adults don’t even come close. That means that milk really will do your body good.

Even if you are getting enough calcium, you need vitamin D to absorb it. The NIH recommends 800 IU per day. Most Americans get much less than that. The problem is, studies indicate that total intake should be much higher than what the government recommends, around 4,000 IU (0.1 mg) per day.³

Vitamin D is found in fish liver oil and fatty fish species (wild-caught only), eggs, and fortified milk. It also comes from sun exposure. You can read much more about vitamin D and sun exposure in our past issue archives.

By themselves, neither calcium nor vitamin D will do your bones much good. You really need both. Make sure you’re getting the full daily recommendation of each.

Second, you need to do weight-bearing exercise. That doesn’t necessarily mean lifting weights. Weight-bearing exercise is any exercise that requires you to support your body weight (or more). Remember the six functions of bone? Weight-bearing exercise forces your bones to work harder. The message you are sending to your body is that it can’t afford to give up bone density. Your body adapts to the demand.

Swimming and bike riding are great, enjoyable forms of exercise. That’s why they’re among the most common forms of exercise for older individuals. However, they are not weight-bearing. That means they don’t help at all in preventing osteoporosis. You certainly don’t have to stop doing these things. But they’re just not enough.

What can you do instead? Glad you asked. All of the following are terrific, easy, and enjoyable forms of weight-bearing exercise:

• Running, jogging, walking, or hiking.
• Dancing.
• Tai chi, yoga, or martial arts.
• Golf.
• Racquet sports.
• Team sports (e.g., baseball, basketball, football, softball, volleyball).
• Strength training (e.g., barbells, dumbbells, machines, body weight exercises).

By participating in these activities, you will actually increase your bone density over time. You will also reap all the other myriad benefits of regular exercise. That’s a win-win deal.

Modern medicine often treats your body as the enemy, and it reacts accordingly. Instead, work with your body. Teach it to do what you want it to do. By making simple lifestyle changes, you can reprogram your body for good health.

Proper nutrition and weight-bearing exercise can go a long way toward preventing osteoporosis. They’re also good for almost every other aspect of your health.

Now that’s something Big Pharma doesn’t want you to know.

To Your Health,

Michael Noltemeyer
Managing Editor
Total Health Breakthroughs

References: