LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Osteoporosis Cures and Bone Health

Complicated Calcium Confusion: What’s the Best Source of Calcium?

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I can honestly say that I have never been a fan of calcium supplementation.  Or at least maybe not for the last decade or so.

It has truly been that long since the medical research began to change its opinion on using calcium supplements to strengthen bones.  This is not to say that I don’t recommend calcium supplements, but it is a pretty rare situation and only when someone has been diagnosed (in our office or elsewhere) with severe osteoporosis.  It has been a long, long time since I recommended calcium for anyone just to “build strong bones.”

Before we go any further, I do need to clarify something about calcium supplements for bone health.  Tums are NOT a calcium supplement.  It is a toxic product containing aluminum and artificial colors and should never, ever have been recommended to support bone health.

Any calcium supplement used for bone health should be a bone support formula, containing not only calcium, but other bone-supporting components like magnesium, boron and zinc.  And the best form of calcium is NOT calcium carbonate.  Higher quality forms like citrate are the preferred forms–especially when it matters.

Another thing that you may not realize is that your body is very selective as to how much calcium it will absorb at any given time.  This is because calcium levels are very tightly regulated in the bloodstream.  Too much or too little calcium can be fatal.  As in rigor mortis, the ultimate calcium deficiency in the bloodstream.  To keep this level constant, the gut keeps a very tight grip on how much calcium is absorbed at any given time.  If you decide to down an entire bottle of calcium supplements at a single time, the gut will actually push back, resulting in even lower amounts of calcium being absorbed.

This is why, when you are taking calcium supplements, you should take them spread out throughout the day as much as possible.

But none of this really matters because of one important fact.

Vitamin D plays a very large role in regulating the amount of calcium you gut will absorb (it’s role is much bigger, but for the purposes of this particular line of discussion, this will suffice).  With low levels of vitamin D (an all-too common problem in todays’ sun-fearing society) more calcium may not be enough to get the job done.  On the flip side, having enough vitamin D flowing through your blood will make taking a calcium supplement pointless on top of a good quality diet.

Unfortunately, for years, doctors were telling their patients to take calcium supplements (frequently in the form of Tums) and given no recommendations on vitamin D.  While that is changing, this particular study demonstrates how backwards this recommendation is.

In the study, researchers looked at 3448 men and 3812 women who were older than 50 years of age and broke them down into daily dietary calcium intakes of (1) less than 400 mg/d, (2) 400–799 mg/d, (3) 800–1199 mg/d, and (4) 1200 mg/d or greater.  Overall, the average daily calcium intake was 470 mg/d.

They then measured bone density and compared it to average daily calcium intake.  Here’s what they found:

  • Those with calcium intake less than 400 mg/d had lower bone density (specifically, femoral cortical thickness and buckling ratio).
  • In men, bone density was higher in those with calcium intakes up to 1200 mg/d.
  • Importantly, these interactions disappeared when the 25-hydroxyvitamin D level was over 30 ng/mL (men) or 20 ng/mL (women).

So, while it can be argued that calcium is important for bone health, it pales in comparison to the effect of vitamin D, so much so that adequate (not even optimal) levels of vitamin D essentially protect against low calcium.

That’s not to say that you should deliberately deprive yourself of calcium while taking vitamin D just to see if it pans out.  Rather, a solid diet with good calcium sources combined with vitamin D supplementation (starting at 2,000 IU / day) is the best way to go.  Solid sources of dietary calcium include:

  • Spinach and kale
  • Okra
  • Collards
  • Soybeans
  • White beans
  • Some fish like sardines, salmon, perch, and rainbow trout
  • And there are foods that are calcium-fortified, such as soy milk, some orange juice, oatmeal, and breakfast cereal

You might notice the suspicious lack of dairy on the list.  If you’re a regular reader of the Rantings you’ll know that I’m not a fan of dairy.  Enough so that I compiled an eBook of research demonstrating that dairy is not the health food that we think it is that can be found by clicking here.

 

Effect of Calcium Carbonate on the Absorption of Levothyroxine – (11-09-00)

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Effect of Calcium Carbonate on the Absorption of Levothyroxine

Do we really need more evidance to avoid calcium carbonate?? The unfortunate situation here is that the age group likely to take synthetic thyroid hormone is also likely to be taking calcium to avoid osteoporosis. And many doctors are still recommending TUMS and other sources of calcium carbonate to their patients.

Read entire article here

The Dairy Propaganda Takes a Hit Again, About 27% Worth…

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Practically every day I hear the “dairy is awesome” commercials on the radio, and it’s a continual fight to keep my lunch down.

One would think, listening to the commercials, that dairy is a proven method to make muscles stronger, bones stronger and make a child grow taller.  Given the authoritative tone of the commercial, few would question the benefits of dairy.  When I hear the promotion of dairy as building strong muscles, I personally know that there is zero evidence to support this claim.  The promotion of dairy to make a child grow taller is, likewise, supported by zero evidence.

If I were to go on the radio and make absurd claims with no evidence to back up medical claims (“chiropractic adjusting will make your child grow taller”), my board would come down on me and there would be a price to be paid.  But somehow, the lies in these commercials have no backlash and have been playing for years.

The only saving grace in the commercial is that having your teenager drink more milk is going to make sure they grow up with strong bones and teeth (somehow, because teeth are made out of bone, it is ok to make the jump in association between building strong bones and strong teeth).  After all, that is all we have heard from health books, public health recommendations and doctors.  For those of you who have read my eBook The Misconception of Dairy as a Health Food will know that the evidence that dairy is good for our health is spotty at best, a lie at the worst.

This particular article once again shines the spotlight on the lies we have been sold by the dairy industry with the help our the public health machine and uneducated physicians.  In it, researchers looked at the relationship between dairy consumption between the ages of 13 and 18 and risk of a low impact hip fracture later in life on over 195,000 men and women.  Here’s what they found:

  1. Every single glass of milk per day increase the risk of a hip fracture by 9%.
  2. Once these scores were adjusted for height, the risk dropped somewhat to 6% per glass.
  3. Teenage milk consumption was not related to hip fractures in women.

If you follow the commercials’ recommendations, your 3 servings of dairy per day will up your risk of a fracture by a respectable 18%.  While this risk may not be great, the fact that there is ANY risk at all when we have been sold a bill of goods that dairy protects our bones illustrates how misguided some of our public health measures are.  When you add the fact that dairy has calories to the childhood obesity situation, the idea that we should be promoting more dairy and cheese sound like an even worse idea.

 

Take Doctor-Recommended Calcium? This Tip May Save Your Life

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Of all the supplements that my patients take, calcium supplementation for osteoporosis prevention is one of the most popular.  Many have been told to take calcium by their doctors.

In all my years of practice, I have not routinely recommended calcium supplementation. When I do, it is only for those who, either in our office or at a bone density testing center, have been diagnosed with severe osteoporosis. I would not recommend calcium to someone with osteopenia, and certainly not to anyone else who was worried about bone health.

I have however, been a strong advocate of vitamin D.  Among the many functions of vitamin D and the one that was known long before others were discovered, is to aid the absorption of calcium from the gastrointestinal tract.

Here’s the kicker.  The active form of vitamin D is the form that does all the important stuff like cancer prevention and balancing the immune system.  This is not the supplement form of vitamin D.  One of the strongest triggers for the body to convert the supplement / sunshine form of vitamin D into the active form is a dip in calcium levels in the bloodstream.

To put this in reverse, if you have plenty of dietary calcium (such as taking calcium supplements) your body has no need to produce the active, more potent form of vitamin D.  This means you may not get the best benefits from vitamin D.

Which includes the ability to protect the heart.  Which brings us to this particular study.  In it, researchers looked at 190 premenopausal and 182 postmenopausal women with cholesterol issues and gave them either 800 mg of calcium per day or a placebo for 2 years and checked them for a variety of heart disease risk factors.  Here’s what they found:

  1. Total cholesterol levels increased in the calcium supplementation group.
  2. Carotid intima media thickness, a measurement of how much plaque you have in the blood vessels of the neck, increased (not a good thing).

The research is very solid that, in someone who has a good dietary intake of calcium (not from dairy–sources like green leafy vegetables and nuts), calcium supplementation has no benefit on bone density and risk of osteoporosis.  This information is now years old, so if your doctor continues to recommend calcium supplementation and you don’t have osteoporosis, it’s time to find a new one that actually reads medical literature.

The results of this study just reaffirms that you should NOT be supplementing with calcium.  Save your money and spend it on vitamin D and broccoli instead.

 

Very delayed reactions to cow’s milk in cow’s milk-intolerant patients – (06-26-00)

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Very delayed reactions to cow’s milk in cow’s milk-intolerant patients

Why do we still insist of drinking cow’s milk when allergy, chemical and hormonal additives are such an issue? Many studies even suggest that cow’s milk may INCREASE risk of osteoporosis. This study suggests allergic reactions as late as 72 hours after ingestion. And pay attention to the list of symptoms of allergy–not things many would expect…

Allergy 55 (6), 574-579 In patients with cow’s milk protein intolerance (CMPI), delayed clinical reactions to cow’s milk (CM) ingestion may be misdiagnosed if the clinical symptoms are not “classical” and there is a long time lapse between ingestion of CM and the clinical reaction. The “very delayed” CMPI manifestations in these subjects were constipation (five cases), wheezing (two cases), dermatitis plus constipation (two cases), and dermatitis alone (one case); in 6/10 patients, the symptoms observed at the “cure challenge” were different from those at CMPI onset. Very delayed clinical reactions to reintroduction of CM in the diet can occur in CMPI patients; thus, accurate follow-up and frequent outpatient observation in patients with a long history of CMPI are probably more useful and safer than prolonged CM challenge.

FDA Clears Beckman Coulter’s Osteoporosis Blood Test – (05-20-00)

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FDA Clears Beckman Coulter’s Osteoporosis Blood Test

What amazes me about this is that several labs in the country have been running tests for bone turnover for YEARS now!! And, even better, they use urine to test the rate at which bone is being broken down. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted 510(k) marketing clearance to Beckman Coulter for its Access Ostase blood test for use in managing osteoporosis and Paget’s disease. The new test, known in the industry as a “bone turnover marker,” will be the first automated, serum-based assay sold and updates the firm’s own manual assay, the Hybritech Ostase Test, Beckman Public Affairs Associate Jobe Dubbs told Reuters Health.

Bone Loss Resumes When Calcium Supplementation Stops – (05-20-00)

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Bone Loss Resumes When Calcium Supplementation Stops

Calcium supplementation is a lifelong commitment and needs to be a part of a healthy lifestyle. Adequate calcium intake must be a “lifetime commitment” if individuals wish to maintain improvements in bone density, according to experts from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). They warn that bone loss associated with aging climbs to pre-therapy levels soon after calcium supplementation is discontinued. “Our take home message is ‘don’t stop,’” said Dr. Bess Dawson-Hughes, of the Jean Mayer USDA Human nutrition research Center on Aging, Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts. She presented her findings here at the Experimental Biology 2000 conference.