1. YOUR HEALTH IN YOUR HANDS-OSTEOPOROSIS
Posted by bmhegde on 1
“Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.”
George Santayana.
The health of any individual is, to a large extent, in the hands of the individual himself/herself. Of course, this statement does not take into consideration the genetic inheritance. Even the latter could be influenced by the individual by changing one’s environment and the mind. Gene penetrance, the capacity of any gene to produce a disease, depends mainly on the environmental support. This statement might surprise the “well informed” public who has come to believe that man lives mainly because of the efforts of the medical fraternity and the pharma industry with the help of technology manufacturers.
One is constantly reminded that there is a pill for every ill, which is only a myth like the many that we are sold daily by the media barons. If the reader wants some help in this area Myrna Blyth, a top magazine editor for twenty years, tells you how the media takes you for a ride. She also gives tips in her book about how not to get spun by what one reads or sees on the small screen. In addition, one is also made to believe that one could prevent most, if not all, illnesses by regular check up and correcting the deviations from the “so called” normal levels of various body parameters. These myths have been perpetrated by the disease inventors, the Big pharma lobby, with the help of the black sheep in the medical profession, called the thought leaders in American jargon.
In this article let us analyze one “disease”, which is an ongoing ageing process- osteoporosis. The usual fear generating statements like the following abound in the lay media. “Osteoporosis is often called the “silent disease” because bone loss occurs without symptoms. Twenty percent of all women over the age of 50 have osteoporosis and another 40 per cent have osteopaenia, thinning of the bones that break easily.” These statements would make all women at risk and is very frightening, indeed. This is the statement of the National Osteoporosis Foundation. Any informed woman aged fifty and above would immediately rush to a hospital for a bone density scan, more so, if she has also been scanning the internet with a plethora of “health” sites frightening people; most of them being funded by vested interests.
In health bones undergo constant remodeling to repair minor injuries, maintain strength, and give the body a reservoir of calcium. There are two kinds of cells doing this routinely-osteoclasts removing calcium from the bone, and osteoblasts that lay down new bone. This balance changes after the age of 40 or so when the loss is more than the gain and gradually the bone mineral density decreases in every human being as age advances. The original WHO expert group, intentionally or unintentionally, made a fatal mistake in taking young bone as healthy and the adult and elderly bone as a disease-osteoporosis. In fact, osteoporosis is a normal ageing process and not a disease.
The WHO study group recommended that every post-menopausal woman should have a bone scan. Aided and abetted by the drug companies, doctors now prescribe costly drugs to treat this normal physiologic change. A recent audit showed that “81 women in society with osteoporosis will have to take an expensive drug (Fosamax) for 4.2 years, at a cost of more than $ 300,000, to prevent one hip fracture”. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (2001; 344: 333-340) showed that even advanced osteoporosis in the age group of 70-79 did get very little help by any of the drugs that are prescribed. More so these drugs have been shown NOT to change the hip fracture rates in elderly women!
The real risk factors for hip fractures are increased frailty due to age, muscle weakness due to lack of exercise, side effects of many of the drugs that one takes, declining vision, and cigarette smoking. Bone Mineral Density screening detects only a small percentage of those at risk-less than 20% at an enormous cost to the patient. Another study showed in the Journal of the American Medical Association (1998; 280: 2077-2082) that many of the drugs used in the treatment of osteoporosis actually increased the risk of hip fractures! Divine interventionalists should never delude themselves in thinking that they could upset Nature’s methods.
Eighty per cent of the body’s bone is made up of the outer hard cover called cortical bone. In some areas the bones also have an inner structure of trabacular bone, which anchors the outer cortex like the “three dimensional geodesic dome”, giving additional strength to the areas most vulnerable to fractures, such as the hip, wrists and the spine. Since trabacular bone is larger in mass it suffers the most in ageing process. The new bone, said to be formed by drugs given by doctors, would only make the cortical bone denser, thus making the vulnerable areas more prone to fractures. Recently the FDA even wrote a letter to Eli Lily Company to stop their advertisement for these drugs in the media! What, then, is the remedy?
Regular exercise and good nutrition are the key to keep the bones healthy for a long time. The main culprit in the diet is salt. Since sodium exchanges for calcium in the kidneys the more salt one eats more calcium one loses from the body. Low salt intake, even when one is young, would go a long way in keeping normal bone density longer. High calcium content in diet is another vital part of good health. Many of us think that milk is a good source of calcium. Yes, it is for the calf and not for man. Milk is bad food for man. Highly absorbable calcium is found in abundance in dark leafy vegetables and beans. In the west there are the calcium rich vegetable milks made from Soya, rice, almonds and oats. Oral calcium is no good. Higher the calcium intake as a drug, larger is the calcium quantity that gets lost through the kidneys, leaving the system with a negative calcium balance at the end of the day. Exercise is the key to healthy bones. The earlier one starts the better, but if one has been sedentary for years, exercise at any age quickly tries to help strengthen the bones. Your health, therefore, is in your hands only.
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
Theodore Roosevelt.