HEALTHY: Osteoporosis prevention and reversal with supplements/ diet / and exercise -vs- osteoporosis drugs
The drug backfires after 3-5 years, the nutrition route may work better for many people.
Is your health coming from the farm or the pharm?
The average 55-year-old in the United States is taking 5 prescription medications. As we age, we tend to increase the number of drugs we take. It is estimated that the average 75-year-old is on 6-7 prescription drugs. Add all the over-the-counter drugs like Tylenol and ibuprofen into the mix and that’s a lot of drugs. The term “polypharmacy” refers to the simultaneous use of multiple medications, often defined as five or more prescriptions. The main concern with polypharmacy, is the increased risk of adverse reactions due to one of the drugs interacting with another of the drugs. And this is on top of the already real risk of negative effects each drug has on its own. Common effects include dizziness, confusion, gastrointestinal issues, or more serious complications like kidney or liver damage. I am a chiropractor. Mine is a drugless profession. We earn a living treating conditions without the use of drugs, so of course one would suspect I am anti-drug. I hope you will come see me for your headache rather than take Tylenol, I hope you will see me for your back problem rather than begin taking opioids, I would rather you consult me about how to use nutrition to strengthen your thyroid, if possible, rather than get on levothyroxine.
That being said, I recognize the blessing medications can be in our lives when necessary. Many of us owe our lives to a prescription. What would a person with type 1 diabetes do without insulin? How many lives have been saved because we use antibiotics with surgeries or severe infections. As I type this, I am on a prescription creme I use temporarily every few years to bring out and kill precancerous skin cells in an attempt to prevent skin cancer in the future. I am usually hesitant to speak negatively about a medication, and I believe people should consult their prescribing doctor when deciding to go off of any medication that has been prescribed. I state all these things to prepare my readers to understand my perspective as over the next couple of months I will be addressing a few prescriptions that I hope can be avoided if my readers are armed with knowledge and alternatives.
Osteoporosis medications, the Bisphosphonates such as Fosamax, Boniva, Actonel or Reclast all work in the same basic manner. These drugs stop Osteoclasts from functioning. Osteoclasts are cells in your body whose natural job is to break down and allow resorption of your old bone. So if you stop the osteoclasts from doing their job, your bones will get thicker over time, therefore at least temporarily, reducing the likely hood of fractures. This sounds fine at first until you understand that osteoclast activity is necessary for you to have healthy bones. Our skin sloughs off over time and new skin cells grow behind them, this is happening constantly throughout your life. Much like skin our bones are also being broken down and replaced with new healthy bone tissue. We have new bones every year or so. The process relies on removal of old bone tissue by osteoclasts. Then other cells called osteoblasts lay down new bone in place of where the old bone was. When a person takes a bisphosphonate drug attempting to treat osteoporosis, the old bone is no longer cleared out making room for new bone. While this initially helps strengthen bones and reduce fracture risk, prolonged suppression of bone turnover can lead to the accumulation of older, brittle bones. Over time, this may paradoxically increase the risk of fractures.
A critical question arises: at what point do fracture rates become higher than they would have been without bisphosphonate treatment? Research suggests that for most individuals, the benefits of bisphosphonates outweigh the risks during the first 3 to 5 years of therapy. Beyond this period, the risk of fractures may increase.
So, I would support using these osteoporosis drugs if you suspected you only had 3-5 years left to live anyway and just didn’t want to break your hip, get pneumonia and die even sooner. But what about the person who has just had a DEXA scan at age 60 and finds they have thinning bones but is otherwise healthy? What will they do at age 65 with now thicker bones, but now these bones are even more fracture prone than when they started taking the drug?
Rather than take a drug that backfires after 3-5 years, why not work to build your bone naturally in the first place? Preventing and reversing osteoporosis naturally is possible.
Most people know Calcium helps. Many even know to add Magnesium and Vitamin D. But did you know that to build the matrix of your bone, you also require the minerals manganese, boron, silica, strontium, and zinc, and the vitamins B6, C, K1 and K2.
Here is what I recommend:
Calcifood wafers or powder from standard process. It is made of bone tissue which has all the minerals and vitamins needed including the trace minerals.
Biost from standard process. It has protomorphygens from veal bone. Protomorphygens are made from the genetic material of the specific organ you are trying to strengthen and are meant to support our organs to function better and become stronger. Standard process makes protomorphygens for many of our organs like the thyroid, adrenals, nerve tissue, liver and in this case our bones.
Vitamin D3: The best way to get vitamin D is when the sun hits our skin and we synthesize it ourselves. But here in Idaho especially in the winter we don’t get much sun and most of us are deficient. if you aren’t in the sun much.
- Light Skin: About 10–20 minutes of sun exposure on a summer day at noon with a bathing suit should be sufficient for most individuals to produce 1,000–2,000 IU of vitamin D, meeting daily requirements.
- Darker Skin: About 30–60 minutes or more may be needed for the same benefit
The above sun exposure is easy to get for some of us, but many work inside, don’t get in a bathing suit very often or can’t get out when the sun is at it’s peak vitamin D making time which is summer at noon.
Cruciferous complete from Stadard Process to get added B vitamins and K1 if you don’t consistently get enough leafy green and cruciferous vegetables like broccoli cauliflower, cabbage and Brussel sprouts.
Vitamin K2 in the form of MK-7 (menaquinone-7) plays a key role in bone health by activating proteins like osteocalcin, which helps bind calcium to the bone matrix, and matrix Gla-protein (MGP), which inhibits vascular calcification. Vascular calcification is hardening of the arteries, which leads to high blood pressure. So K2 is good for two things. Research suggests that a daily intake of around 90 to 120 micrograms (mcg) of MK-7 is effective for supporting bone health.
To get plenty of K2, we should eat fermented foods such as sauerkraut, natto, or egg yolks, liver or grass-fed butter. One egg yolk may have 45-190 mcg of K2 depending on what the hens eat. Pasture raised have much more than store bought. So an egg from a hen eating from the pasture may be enough but would probably need 4 store bought egg yolks.
Natto, a traditional Japanese food made from fermented soybeans, is one of the richest natural sources of MK-7. The amount of MK-7 in natto can vary, but typically 1 serving (about 50 grams) of natto contains roughly 100 to 200 mcg of MK-7.
Weight bearing exercise such as walking will help build the bone density of the femoral head and the vertebrae. Pushups will help build the bone of the forearm. These are the bones most often fractured when someone has osteoporosis. Exercise is necessary to combine with the right nutrients to coax the bones into growing thicker.
Let me know if you would like to try the nutrient way of beating osteoporosis and I can guide you through the process.
Calcifood, Biost, Cruciferous complete and 380 other fantastic whole food supplements and world class quality herbals from Standard process and mediherb can be purchased at Ellis Chiropractic, or you can go to our office website Ellischiro.com and click on the green button on the main page to order from my standard process store.