Healthy Andy

Oh, FDA.  You hurt me so much sometimes.  Just when I start to think you might be getting your act together by actually investigating a gigantic egg recall, you poop the proverbial bed and approve a drug that is just plain stupid. 

What, you may ask, have they approved that makes me weep in utter disappointment?  It’s an osteoporosis medication designed to combat bone loss, that ends up destroying bone.  Brilliant.  Because we didn’t learn our lesson with Fossamax, which does pretty much the same thing.

Here’s the basic idea behind the medication, which on the surface, might sound reasonable.  Since osteoporosis is basically a condition of weak bones, it stands to reason that anything that prevents bones from becoming weaker would stop osteoporosis, right?

That’s what Big Pharma thought.  So, they created a drug that prevents the natural breakdown of bone by your body.

Wait, what?  Your body breaks down bone?  That’s right.  In fact, your bones are constantly being broken down and rebuilt.  The biggest mistake people make when it comes to bone is to think of bone as a dead, dry chunk of rock that sits inside of you.

Maybe that incorrect notion comes from people seeing dead, dried out bones lying on the ground or in a museum.  But living bone is very vibrant, dynamic tissue that dramatically changes due to the stresses put on it. 

As a result, the body constantly breaks bone down and rebuilds it as is necessary.  Old, decaying bone is cleared out, and new bone is put back in.  The balance of this breaking down (called osteoclastic) and building up (osteoblastic) is how strong your bones are.

Again, the theory behind Fossamax or this new drug is, that if we stop the breaking down process, why, then there will be only building up of bone!  We’re geniuses!  Osteoporosis= solved!

Not so much.  Here’s the problem.  The reason why that old and decayed bone was being broken down and cleared out in the first place is that the old bone was OLD AND DECAYED.  So now, rather than removing the old, worn-out, useless stuff so that you can put in brand new stuff, you’re stuck with the old worn-out stuff.

Are we starting to see the flaw in the logic?  Your skin is also constantly renewing itself; old dead skin cells fall off and are replaced by new skin cells.  Could you imagine if we forced the body to never slough off dead skin cells?  We’d all have skin like elephants in no time flat!

This breaking down and building up process is crucial to the normal operation of our body.  Any time somebody comes along and thinks they’re going to outsmart human physiology and mess with that normal operation, something inevitably goes horribly, horribly wrong.

In the case of Fossamax and similar drugs, one of the big problems is bone death, called osteonecrosis (which means “bone death”, literally.  I’m just going to stick with plain, non-Latin ”bone death”). It often occurs in the jaw… we’re not sure why.  My guess is, it’s because the jaw is under very surprising amounts of stress on a regular basis (really, we can bite harder than we think) and therefore is probably undergoing a lot more dynamic breakdown-buildup action than other bones.

The point is, people on these kinds of drugs basically have a part of their jaw rot out.  Awesome.  But I bet you understand why, having read this article and not having billions of dollars in potential profit at stake.  However, when you DO have billions of dollars in potential profit at stake, you tend to overlook little details like physiology and people’s jaws falling off.

You want to combat osteoporosis?  Read this article about the basics.  There’s some very simple preventative measures, mostly involving terribly invasive things like exercise and avoiding sugar.  But hey, it’s better than the lower half of your face falling off.

Avoid the crazy drugs and stay healthy!

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/029702_bone_drugs_risks.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nnewshomepage+%28NN+Homepage%29

Learning how to avoid osteoporosis is a huge concern for a large part of the population, and for good reason… our bones protect our vital organs and provide the structural support that lets our muscles move us around.  We take our bones for granted; it seems like the muscles get all the press.  Muscles are obviously dynamic, and change rapidly and visibly in response to training.

For that reason, some people think of bone as sort of a blah, inert substance that’s little more than organic concrete.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Bone is living, vibrant tissue, which is absolutely central to our health as a whole.  It’s more than just a framework.  Among other things, bones act as a factory for all kinds of blood cells and also as a backup repository for calcium.

Most people think of calcium as something they need just to keep their bones strong.  Wrong.  Calcium is used by the body for all kinds of activities… muscular contraction, proper function of nerves, and creating the electrical signals used by the heart.  So, yeah, kind of important stuff.

That’s why your body is willing to pull calcium out of the bones if your blood levels get a little low.  It’s more important to keep your heart beating than to have strong bones.  So if we want to avoid osteoporosis (weakening of the bones), a big way to do that is to avoid losing the calcium in the first place.

How?  Well, the best way is to look at why the body loses calcium.  Sure, if your dietary intake of calcium is low, you’ll lose some there.  But there are far more dramatic sources of calcium loss in the body.

In a word, sugar. 

Yep, our old nemesis is back again and ready to party.  Among all the other horrible effects that sugar has on the body, refined sugar will dramatically increase the amount of calcium lost in the urine.  Which, in turn, drops the levels of calcium in the blood, and your body will respond by pulling calcium out of the bones to keep this vital element at a normal level in your bloodstream.

Soda, in particular, seems to just plain suck the calcium right out of you, so step one in avoiding osteoporosis is to cut out the sugar, including sugary drinks. This is more important than supplementation, in my opinion.  Your body can only take in so much calcium at a time (it’s just a tough nutrient to absorb), and you can lose it much faster than you can put it back.  So one more reason to cut out the sugar.

Weight bearing exercise is just as important.  Remember, bone is ALIVE.  It’s actually super-amazing stuff; it’s tough and resilient but also just flexible enough so that it gives a bit under sudden strain (which makes it less likely to break). 

It also RESPONDS.  Just like your muscles respond to stress by becoming stronger, your bones will also respond to physical stress by strengthening.  The reverse is also true:  just like your muscles will atrophy (shrink up and get weak) with disuse, your bones will weaken if you don’t put them under stress consistently.

So, make sure you’re exercising and stressing those bones.  The more weight-bearing an exercise is, the better… that doesn’t mean you have to be a power-lifter, but yes, even the elderly should be doing some resistance training.

Lastly, there’s supplements.  The main thing to know about calcium supplementation is this:  you need to be taking vitamin D and magnesium along with it.  A good supplement will include them, as they’re necessary co-factors for your body to absorb and actually use the calcium. 

Also, don’t bother taking more than 500 mg of calcium at a time.  Your body reaches saturation around 400-500 mg, and the rest will just pass through unused.  If you need to take more than 500 mg a day, split the doses up throughout the day.

But don’t neglect the big picture, folks!  Taking a supplement is fine, but avoiding sugar and adding in weight-bearing exericse is the main way to avoid osteoporosis and keep your bone health at a maximum!

Just a quickie heads-up on some super-cool news from the research world.  Soon, those bones that you keep insisting on breaking will be able to heal much more quickly.

It’s pretty much modern day science fiction, which, of course = AWESOME.  Right now it’s just in the very experimental phase, which means they’re just doing it with mice, but still, it’s pretty impressive.

What they’re doing is basically using a similar mechanism that earthworms use to regenerate, but adapting it to work with mammals.  It involves using a particular funky protein that, when in high doses in the injured area, increased the amount of healing activity significantly… like 3-4 times more.

The guess is, those proteins are stimulating stem cells in the bone to multiply and differentiate (specialize from raw stem cells into actual bone cells).  The hope, obviously, is that this technique can be modified for use in humans.

The implications are pretty huge.  Not only are we talking about faster fracture healing times, but there could be a potential osteoporosis treatment in there somewhere as well.  And, it’s likely that the same procedure could be adapted for other tissue types, like skin (think of the uses for burn victims!).

Cool stuff, my friends.  Now let’s just hope they can make it affordable!