Predicting Your Weakness

Dear shanlax,

My wife has problems with the above and the only thing we could clearly identify as a preventive medicine was to exercise. Not just the boring walking but learning how to fall. The good old Judo way. This will prevent endangered people from braking bones. All the talk about rejuvenating older bodies (she is only in her Late fifties) is a money making exercise and can not prevent accidents to happen. Learning how to fall (again, like a child) is the best prevention. Hope you find this answer not recalcitrant. Ky.

It is amazing, how much that we know about bones is recently garnered. It also surprising how much is not known of the function of simple things like collagen.

There is one major factor in bone health, that is well known in a roundabout way. The body maintains the blood pH within very tight limits. And at whatever cost. As our usual food tends toward acidifying, unless you rectify that, the body goes to the bones to rob Calcium, and uses that as an alkalizing agent. The process is imperfect, and the redepositing happens thru a different pathway, frequently excess Ca remains and get dumped willy-nilly. Bone spurs, Ca deposits in the arteries are a sure sign of this kind of trouble. Now, I am talking straight biochemistry. Your average doctor, having received quite different education likely to have other views. Having learned biochemistry I stick with it for myself and for my loved ones in cases about which it is clear. The bone mineral question is clear. All minerals are alkalizing. Taking them as supplement and from fresh fruits and vegetables, and you stop and to some extent reverse bone mineral loss. The body gets rid of excess, but cannot do without, whatever it needs.

And, yes, walking and balance exercises are absolutely needed. Use it or lose it is exactly applicable. Dancing is good too and most ladies like it. I am not so sure about most guys.

shanlax:

As part of my prostate cancer treatment, I was given a biophosphonate, Zometa, beginning in 2004. In 2005, I learned of a potential side effect, osteonecrosis (bone death), which I didn't want to risk. I stopped the Zometa and began looking for alternatives. What I found was strontium. Here is a layman's perception:

Bone is living, dynamic tissue. It is constantly being broken down by one type of cell, osteoclasts, and rebuilt by another type, osteoblasts. In healthy young individuals, this activity is in balance and the bone develops normal mass and strength. With advanced age, the tearing down continues but the growth slows. As the BMD (Bone Mineral Density) declines to osteopenia, then osteoporosis, the weakened bone may fracture, often in the spine and hips. Life becomes very difficult, sometimes impossible, for an affected individual. Disease and some treatments may accelerate the process.

Biophosphonates are the pharmaceutical industry's solution to this problem and they have improved quality of life for millions of individuals. They have also become a multi-billion dollar industry. Unfortunately, they have a down side, which wasn't reported until about 2004, and is still mentioned only vaguely. The problem, as I understand it, is that biophosphonates work by reducing osteoclastic activity in the body. As a result, osteoblastic activity, even at its reduced level, is able to build bone mass and strength, but the "extra" bone is dead bone which should have been removed by osteoclasts. That bone may not heal, creating a predisposition for osteonecrosis. The jaw is particularly susceptible and the result, if there's an injury or tooth extraction for example, can be a lifetime of painful, exposed bone and infection.

I found that, particularly in Europe, there's strong interest in strontium as an alternative solution to the weakening of aging bones. Strontium is chemically similar to calcium and, in the body, it becomes a structural part of bone along with calcium. Strontium has been tested in this role for over 50 years but was sidetracked in this country, partly by uninformed panic about strontium 90, a radioactive isotope created by nuclear testing. Strontium also has a, possibly fatal, flaw. It's cheap. There is no multi-billion dollar industry promoting it. In fact, a very powerful industry would suffer financially if it becomes "the gold standard" for treatment of aging bones.

This "problem" was addressed in Europe by development of a new compound, strontium ranelate, which could be patented, controlled and sold at a high price. That's what has been tested and reported. Still available and effective, though, are common strontium carbonate and citrate (which I am using). I have taken 680 milligrams/day of strontium, as citrate, for 2 years, for about forty cents a day, with excellent results. Calcium must be continued, but at a different time of day from the strontium. I take the strontium in the early morning on an empty stomach. Despite the cancer and 9 years of treatment, my left hip BMD is reported to be 113% of the mean for age-matched controls and 86% of the young adult mean.

DickL