Osteoporosis by Phillip Day

plus osteope­nia

by Phillip Day

 Pro­file

On aver­age, one in three women and one in 12 men over 50 in the west­ern cul­tures suf­fer from osteo­poro­sis or its pre­cur­sor, osteope­nia (low bone min­eral den­sity). The word osteo­poro­sis actu­ally means ‘porous bone’. The dis­ease is all but unknown in those con­sum­ing plant-based agrar­ian diets (which should have alarm bells ring­ing imme­di­ately). The dis­ease is most com­mon in post-menopausal females, where as many as one in four may suf­fer the condition.

Symp­toms

Osteo­poro­sis is described by low bone den­sity and a dete­ri­o­ra­tion of bone tis­sue, lead­ing to extreme fragility and hip frac­tures. Spine and bones become dem­iner­alised and the bones take on a hon­ey­combed look. Osteo­poro­sis in its early stages is also char­ac­terised by severe back­ache. Decrease in height will be expe­ri­enced over a period of time.

Vit­a­min D deficiency

Osteo­poro­sis should first and fore­most be treated as a vit­a­min D and nutri­tional defi­ciency issue. Proper bone health can­not be achieved with­out an opti­mum vit­a­min D-3 level, a nutri­tious diet, and proper exercise.

The patient’s vit­a­min D serum level should be checked as a mat­ter of first resort for those suf­fer­ing from, or at risk of osteo­poro­sis. A 25-hydroxy D test should be requested from the patient’s GP, or the quicker and less trou­ble­some route is to order a 25-hydroxy D test kit from www.vitamindtest.org.uk. This is the UK’s Birm­ing­ham City Hos­pi­tal Pathol­ogy Laboratory’s mail order test kit which can be sent to cus­tomers even if they live abroad. This is a fast and cheap method of learn­ing a person’s D serum con­cen­tra­tion fig­ure, which is all-important. The idea is to opti­mize a patient’s D serum con­cen­tra­tion to 180 — 200 nmol/L to max­imise immune func­tion by sup­ple­ment­ing vit­a­min D-3 (chole­cal­cif­erol). Adult patients can com­mence sup­ple­men­ta­tion of 10,000–15,000 IU/day of D-3 while they get the test sorted out and obtain the results.

Once the ini­tial 25 (OH)D result is known, sup­ple­men­ta­tion and sun expo­sure can be adjusted accord­ingly. Once the goal of 150–200 nmol/L is reached through sup­ple­men­ta­tion, a daily sup­ple­men­ta­tion of 5,000 – 10,000 IU/day accord­ing to body­weight will main­tain lev­els. It is advised to test for D-3 twice a year to ensure lev­els are main­tained ‘in the zone’.

Com­men­tary

The tra­di­tional approach is to change the patient’s diet to include dairy prod­ucts, which often makes things worse. HRT is some­times pre­scribed with dis­as­trous results, espe­cially in the realm of caus­ing can­cer and other prob­lems. Amer­i­cans con­sume huge quan­ti­ties of dairy, with approx­i­mately 1$ in every $7 spent on food pur­chas­ing some form of dairy prod­uct, yet they have one of the high­est inci­dences of osteo­poro­sis in the world. Clearly some­thing else is going on. Drs. Mur­ray and Piz­zorno, authors of the Ency­clopae­dia of Nat­ural Med­i­cine, remark:

“Osteo­poro­sis involves both the min­eral (inor­ganic) and non-mineral (organic matrix, com­posed pri­mar­ily of pro­tein) com­po­nents of the bone. This is the first clue that there is more to osteo­poro­sis than a lack of dietary cal­cium. In fact, lack of dietary cal­cium in the adult results in a sep­a­rate con­di­tion known as osteo­ma­la­cia, or soft­en­ing of the bone. The two con­di­tions are dif­fer­ent, in that in osteo­ma­la­cia, there is only a defi­ciency of cal­cium in the bone. In con­trast, in osteo­poro­sis, there is a lack of both cal­cium and other min­er­als, as well as a decrease in the non-mineral, organic matrix of the bone. Lit­tle atten­tion has been given to the impor­tant role this organic matrix plays in main­tain­ing bone struc­ture.” 1

So what causes osteoporosis?

The impor­tance of acid/alkali

Dr Ted Morter Jr. has spent a life­time analysing the effects dif­fer­ent foods have on our inter­nal envi­ron­ment. Morter states that the body responds per­fectly to every stim­u­lus that is applied to it, and each of these body responses is geared towards one aim and one aim only — sur­vival. Some­times this response is termed ‘dis­ease’ if it goes against our ideal of what ‘health’ should be. Morter con­firms the fact that the human body likes to dwell in a slight alkali (around pH 7.4).

When we acid­ify our inter­nal envi­ron­ment with cer­tain types of food, the body is forced to neu­tralise or ‘buffer’ this acid using a num­ber of inge­nious sys­tems, mostly com­pris­ing alka­lis­ing min­er­als, such as sodium, cal­cium, potas­sium, mag­ne­sium and iron. Urine pH is a good indi­ca­tor of what is hap­pen­ing inside the body and varies accord­ing to how much excess pro­tein is con­sumed and must be buffered. Note that blood pH must ALWAYS be between 7.35 and 7.45 or else life ends abruptly within a mat­ter of hours.2

The pro­tein lev­els most of us eat today are many times greater than the body actu­ally needs (between 20–40 g a day are the esti­mated require­ments), and the excess we con­sume is quite lit­er­ally killing us. The ani­mal food indus­tries do their best to sow into the pub­lic psy­che the myth that we are all in peril of pro­tein and cal­cium defi­cien­cies. The oppo­site is true. Excess pro­tein is doing us in and coarse cal­cium from milk can­not be read­ily absorbed by the body in the way that fine cal­cium from veg­gies can. Some of us are slog­ging down up to 10 times the body’s pro­tein require­ments or more in our efforts to con­sume a herd of wilde­beest and drink a swim­ming pool full of milk with our grain ‘cere­als’ laced with refined sugar every morn­ing. How our sys­tem even­tu­ally exhausts itself and col­lapses with all the acid gen­er­ated is a book all on its own. But for our pur­poses here, the key to osteo­poro­sis is in under­stand­ing the effects of acid and excess pro­tein con­sump­tion and how the body tries to deal with them. When the diges­tive sys­tem is hit with a storm of acid derived from exces­sive pro­tein food metab­o­lism, this acid is poten­tially lethal and our hard-working bod­ies need to sort the prob­lem in a hurry.

Firstly the brain mobilises min­eral buffers to raise the acidic pH of our inter­nal envi­ron­ment towards neu­tral in an effort to coun­ter­act the acid.3 After scoff­ing down burg­ers, chicken nuggets, eggs, pasta, cheese, seafood, grains – all accom­pa­nied by the inevitable acid-producing cof­fee, tea, sodas and alco­hol — the min­eral buffers use alka­lis­ing min­er­als such as sodium, potas­sium, cal­cium, mag­ne­sium and iron along with water to com­bine with the acid gen­er­ated by these food ashes to raise their pH, before escort­ing them out of the body via the kid­neys. Notice the body loses these alka­lis­ing min­er­als when they are elim­i­nated along with the acid.

If we are eat­ing mineral-deficient, processed foods and are not con­sum­ing plenty of fresh water, the body may run short of these alka­lis­ing min­er­als and so starts to strip them from our bones. The result of these with­drawals is ‘porous bone’, or osteo­poro­sis. This dis­ease can be cor­rectly termed ‘a sur­vival response’ to 21st cen­tury dietary habits.

Osteo­poro­sis in the elderly

Diets of the elderly are espe­cially guilty of caus­ing osteo­poro­sis since old folks often rely on labour-light, processed ‘ready meals’ instead of an alka­lis­ing diet rich in fruits, veg­eta­bles, hari­cots, etc. The favourites of the elderly — milk, meat, bread and cereal grains, sug­ars, breads, cof­fee, etc. — are all prime gen­er­a­tors of acid, thus putting the body — and the skele­ton — under tremen­dous pres­sure to come up with the min­er­als and water required to buffer the acid. All that milk con­sumed by Amer­i­cans, touched on ear­lier, can actu­ally pre­cip­i­tate osteo­poro­sis, since milk is a prime acid-generator, espe­cially if it has been pas­teurised and skimmed, ren­der­ing it a junk food.

Estro­gen dominance

When you eat meat you boost estro­gen lev­els in your body. When you drink milk, you are con­sum­ing bovine estro­gen. When you become over­weight, your fat cells act as endocrine cells, which is why fat men develop breasts. Ladies expe­ri­enc­ing menopausal symp­toms, which may include hot flushes, sweats, mood changes, cysts, fibroids, endometrio­sis, etc. are also at risk from osteo­poro­sis, but for a dif­fer­ent rea­son than above. They are expe­ri­enc­ing estro­gen dom­i­nance over a prog­es­terone defi­ciency, which, over a pro­tracted period of time, may also cause a deple­tion of bone mass in the female, giv­ing rise to osteo­poro­sis (see Menopausal Prob­lems).

Bone is liv­ing tis­sue that is always replac­ing itself. Osteoblasts, the cells that build and replace bone mass in humans, have prog­es­terone recep­tors. No prog­es­terone, no osteoblasts. No osteoblasts, no new bone mate­r­ial cre­ated. Osteo­clasts on the other hand, are mult­i­n­u­cle­ate cells that dis­solve old bone mate­r­ial in prepa­ra­tion for the osteoblasts, which move in to replace old cal­ci­fied bone with fresh mate­r­ial. Osteo­clasts have estro­gen recep­tors. So, if there is an estro­gen dom­i­nance, osteo­clasts are hard at work break­ing down cal­ci­fied bone mate­r­ial, leav­ing bones scored and pit­ted in prepa­ra­tion for the bone-building osteoblasts, which fail to act because of the lack of prog­es­terone docked at their receptors.

Put the two fea­tures together and you get bone mur­der. Estro­gen dom­i­nance results in cal­ci­fied (old) bone mate­r­ial being bro­ken down. Cou­ple that with a simul­ta­ne­ous prog­es­terone defi­ciency and you do not have this cal­ci­fied bone being replaced. The net result is, of course, a pro­gres­sive bone loss in the female – osteo­poro­sis – porous bone.

40–60% of females in the west­ern world today expe­ri­ence PMS symp­toms, rang­ing from the notice­able to the severe. Many mil­lions of women are guinea-pigs for the estro­gen industry’s onward march towards its div­i­dend pay­outs. But imag­ine also a female’s diet being acid­i­fied with exces­sive meat and dairy con­sump­tion, caus­ing the body to bloat with water and mobilise cal­cium and other min­er­als out of the bones to restore the blood’s pH bal­ance. Then imag­ine the free-radical activ­ity result­ing from the incom­plete metab­o­lism of refined sug­ars she has put into her body, result­ing in the destruc­tion of healthy cells as free-radicals attempt to sta­bilise them­selves by rob­bing oxy­gen elec­trons out of healthy tis­sue cells. Now you begin to get an idea of what dis­as­ters lie in wait for women who fol­low the pen­chant for west­ern diets and west­ern health­care, which result in west­ern dis­eases. Chief among these are can­cer, throm­bo­sis and osteo­poro­sis – all tied to the irre­spon­si­ble expan­sion of the menopause-as-estrogen-deficiency mindset.

Lack of exercise

A fur­ther part of the prob­lem is that we exer­cise less as we get older, and some of us stop alto­gether. We know what hap­pens to astro­nauts when they go into space for pro­tracted peri­ods of time. They end up with soft bones. Isaac Newton’s famous Third Law states that ‘for every action there is an equal and oppo­site reac­tion’. i.e. to build strong bones you need to exert load-bearing stress onto the skele­ton to cause it to strengthen. In a cushy world today where we go out of our way not to go out of our way, there are no short cuts to build­ing a skele­ton fit for purpose.

Take action!

So, once again, we are on famil­iar ground when it comes to get­ting osteo­poro­sis sorted. It’s diet, diet, diet, diet, lifestyle changes, exer­cise, and some sup­ple­ments to help every­thing mend. Resist the temp­ta­tion to tip cal­cium sup­ple­ments into the body – these can be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and even dan­ger­ous in the absence of ade­quate D-3. Vit­a­min K-2, required for opti­mum absorp­tion of bone matrix mate­r­ial, is plen­ti­ful in a plant-based diet but can also be supplemented.

DIET: COMMENCE THE FOOD FOR THOUGHT LIFESTYLE PROGRAM and study what to avoid. Get rid of ani­mal pro­tein for the dura­tion of the heal­ing period. Ensure as close to a 100% plant-based, 100% raw diet as the patient can get. Juic­ing veg­eta­bles is a great way to help achieve this effort­lessly and absorb opti­mum, use­able nutri­ents the body can use to repair itself. Also ensure the patient con­sumes at least 1 cup­ful of fer­mented veg­eta­bles a day to help opti­mise bowel flora.

RESTORE NUTRIENT BALANCE: COMMENCE THE BASIC SUPPLEMENT PROGRAM ensuring:

Opti­mise vit­a­min D serum lev­els to 150–200 nmol/L (see A Guide to Nutri­tional Sup­ple­ments before tak­ing)4

Vit­a­min C com­plex, 10 g per day (see A Guide to Nutri­tional Sup­ple­ments before tak­ing)5

Mag­ne­sium (oxide), 1g per day, spread through­out the day. If sup­ple­ment­ing with mag­ne­sium cit­rate, take 2 g a day, spread through­out the day  6

Take a nat­ural prog­es­terone cream, such as Naturone, and rub it on the body as directed. This sup­ple­ment pro­vides the body with the bone building function in the pres­ence of an ade­quate diet

TIP: Mod­er­ate but con­sis­tent aer­o­bic and weight-training exer­cise, as directed, to improve bone density

TIP: Sun­light to assist in vit­a­min D and cal­cium metabolism

1 Mur­ray, M & J Piz­zorno, op. cit. p.706–7

2 Nat­ural (phys­i­o­log­i­cal) acid pro­duced through nor­mal cell res­pi­ra­tion is eas­ily expelled in the breath via the lungs. Our blood pH is nor­mally 7.35 when it is cart­ing this acid, in the form of car­bon diox­ide, to the lungs for elim­i­na­tion. Blood is pH 7.45 after it has been ‘cleaned up’, the CO2 removed, and then oxy­gen is taken on to deliver to your heart and the rest of your body.

3 The pH (poten­tial of hydro­gen) scale runs between 0 for pure acid and 14 for pure alkali. 7 is neutral

4 LeBoff MS, Kohlmeier L, Hur­witz S, Franklin J, Wright J, Glowacki J “Occult vit­a­min D defi­ciency in post­menopausal US women with acute hip frac­ture”, JAMA. 1999 Apr 28;281(16):1505–11; Sioka C, Kyrit­sis AP, Fotopou­los A“Multiple scle­ro­sis, osteoporosis,and vit­a­min D”, J Neu­rol Sci. 2009 Dec 15;287(1–2):1–6. Epub 2009 Oct 2

5 Kipp DE, Grey CE, McEl­vain ME, Kim­mel DB, Robin­son RG, Luk­ert BP “Long-term low ascor­bic acid intake reduces bone mass in guinea pigs”, J Nutr. 1996 Aug;126(8):2044–9; Kipp DE, McEl­vain M, Kim­mel DB, Akhter MP, Robin­son RG, Luk­ert BP “Scurvy results in decreased col­la­gen syn­the­sis and bone den­sity in the guinea pig ani­mal model”, Bone. 1996 Mar;18(3):281–8. Erra­tum in: Bone 1996 Oct;19(4):419

6 Sojka JE, Weaver CM “Mag­ne­sium sup­ple­men­ta­tion and osteo­poro­sis”, Nutr Rev. 1995 Mar;53(3):71–4; Dimai HP, Porta S, Wirns­berger G, Lind­schinger M, Pam­perl I, Dob­nig H, Wilders-Truschnig M, Lau KH “Daily oral mag­ne­sium sup­ple­men­ta­tion sup­presses bone turnover in young adult males”, J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1998 Aug;83(8):2742–8