LifeCare Chiropractic

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Osteoporosis Cures and Bone Health

BEST DEPOT OF CALCIUM IN THE BODY IS BONE – (08-25-08)

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Extracellular pH and Bone

It has been known for some time that acid base balance plays a large role in bone metabolism. At the heart is the fact that our bodies use calcium as a buffer for acids in the blood. When calcium in the blood drops (an otherwise potentially life threatening situation) the body quickly moves to correct the drop.

The best depot of calcium in the body is bone. So, in an acid situation, the body will reach calcium from the bone to keep the pH of the blood steady. Keeps us alive short term–destroys bone long term. This is one of the reasons I have always had an issue with the way we treat osteopenia and osteopororis in medicine today–almost exclusively by blocking bone turnover.

An approach to bone health is multifactorial, including exercise, alkaline diet, optimal Vit D levels and an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. In addition, this study found that at acidic pH, the bone matrix actually becomes more soluble, resulting in further bone loss.

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IS THE ASSOCIATION THIN IN LINKS BETWEEN LDL CHOLESTEROL LEVELS AND HEART DISEASE? – (08-25-08)

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Influence of oxLDL on the Viability of Osteoblastic Cells

While much hoopla has been generated about the links between LDL cholesterol levels and heart disease, in reality the association is thin. However, once LDL gets damaged and becomes oxidized (oxLDL), the links to heart disease now become much stronger. Of course, much like every other chronic disease, there are many metabolic abnormalities in common between disease states. If you’re at risk for one, you’re at risk for them all. Great news, huh?

In this study, researchers found an association between oxLDL levels and the health of the cells that create bone, thus connecting one link between CVD and osteoporosis. Again makes you question the logic of using a single drug to impact one single pathway of a chronic disease (i.e. anti-resporptive agents for osteoprosis, statins for cholesterol).

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CALCIUM INTAKE AND HIP FRACTURE RISK IN MEN AND WOMEN – (08-04-08)

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Calcium intake and hip fracture risk in men and women

I’ve never really been a strong supporter in the use of calcium to strengthen bones. Worse yet, I cringe every time I hear a dairy commercial claiming that milk gives you strong bones and muscles. This is a very large meta analysis (almost 171,111 women and 67,000 men) that did not find any association between calcium intake and fracture risk. So why is this? Haven’t we been heavily brainwashed into taking our Tums for calcium and drink 15 servings of dairy per day and our bones will set off the metal detectors at the airports? I’m not sure how much of this is the dairy industry’s doing, but consider this.

We have large amounts of evidence on the benefits of Vitamin D across just about every disease state. But, for Vit D to protect us, it has to get converted to its active form, calcitriol. Conversion to calcitriol is controlled by calcium levels. Low calcium = better conversion to the active form = more protection from calcitriol. The reverse is true for low calcium. So it is highly possible that a high calcium diet (such as dairy) would actually create great harm by lowering the conversion of Vit D to its active form. The more this has come to light, the more I have recommended good levels of Vit D coupled with a good quality diet with an overall adequate source of calcium. Let the body use the active form of Vit D to absorb the calcium it needs and we’re all going to be better off long term.

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ATYPICAL FRACTURES OF THE FEMORAL DIAPHYSIS IN POSTMENOPAUSAL WOMEN – (11-24-08)

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Atypical Fractures of the Femoral Diaphysis in Postmenopausal Women Taking Alendronate

Given that bone is a dynamic tissue, constantly re-typical areasmodeling based upon demands placed upon it, the idea of locking up this turnover with osteoclast inhibitors like alendronate (Fosamax) has never sounded like a good idea to me. While we’ve seen some reduction in spinal and hip fractures w/ the use of anti-resorptive agents, no one has actually looked elsewhere at what this class of drugs may do to bone in other regions of the body.

Sure enough, when we look, we find increased risk of fractures in other, non-typical locations. The bottom line is that the only true way to prevent fractures is a comprehensive, lifestyle and fall prevention approach.

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RELATION BETWEEN DAIRY CONSUMTION AND FEMALE HEIGHT GROWTH – (03-08-10)

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Dairy Consumption and Female Height Growth

Dairy is good from strong bones and teeth? That’s what the commercials would have you believe (although the evidence does not suggest this). This study seems to support this at least as far as making you taller. The fine print, however, is not in the commercials. Faster growth is potentially a risk factor for breast cancer. After all, what is the function of cow’s milk? It’s to rapidly grow a calf to a heffer, right?

As a society we have been so programmed that milk is good for us that no one steps back to see just how weird it really is. Take this for comparison….at what age does it become uncomfortable for a human to stop nursing from its mother? 6 months? 2 years? How about 18? 35? Seems weird, huh? Well, not if the source of that mother’s milk is dairy.

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SERUM CALCIUM AND INCIDENT AND FATAL PROSTATE CANCER – (05-25-09)

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Serum Calcium and Incident and Fatal Prostate Cancer in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

Had to share this…higher serum calcium leads to 2.68 OR for fatal prostate cancer. Kind of brings into question the idea of “dairy it does a body good” and taking calcium for bone health, huh? I first heard it proposed in Dr. Colin Campbell’s the China Study that higher serum calcium leads to lower activation of 25 OH Vit D to calcitriol. Less calcitriol means we open up to risks of chronic diseases associated w/ low Vit D status.

All the research I’ve seen really seems to point to the validity of this process. Because of this I’ve become increasingly wary of calcium supplementation. Instead, maintain good Vit D levels coupled with high quality diet–let the GI tract sort out how much calcium it wants to absorb.

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CORTICOSTEROID USE ON BONE MINERAL DENSITY IN CHILDREN (05-04-09)

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Effect of Long-term Corticosteroid Use on Bone Mineral Density in Children

This study look at the use of chronic and short burst use of inhaled steroids in children w/ mild to moderate asthma. Frighteningly, this pattern of use was associated with reduction in bone mineral accrual at a very important time of there bone forming years.

I guess the frustrating aspects of this study is that asthma treatment in children rarely takes a comprehensive course. You can bet that, in many of these children, both food allergies and poor gut health are contributing if not causative factors. Prolonged courses of antibiotics without any thought of the importance of normal, healthy flora, will lead to imbalances of immune function and Th2 dominance of cytokine expression (consistent w/ asthma and allergies).

Add into this nasty mix the new research that gut inflammation negatively impacts bone health and you’ve got a recipe for diminished bone health.

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BENEFIT OF ADHERENCE DEPENDS ON AGE AND FRACTURE TYPE – (5-11-09)

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Benefit of Adherence With Bisphosphonates Depends on Age and Fracture Type

I’ve always felt that anti-resorptive therapy is the complete wrong way to approach improving bone health. A few things with this study. First, take 10 minutes or so to read through the rather extensive list of conflict of interests!! Next, look at how low the adherence is. Lastly, even with high adherence to medication use, the number of patients that need to be treated to prevent 1 hip fracture is 107.

This number would need to be much, much higher at lower rates of adherence found across the board in the people taking this drug. This is a very high number, suggesting that this class of drugs should not even be used, which is of course contrary to the huge number of scripts written for this class. I’ve always said that if the general public truly understood how useless and dangerous many of these drugs were there would be a paltry market for them.

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