Aug

12

Choosing the Right Sources of Calcium to Prevent Osteoporosis and Fractures

August 12, 2009 | 3 Comments

Posted by: k daniel

bone.vitalityUntil recently, the conventional wisdom on preventing bone fractures focused on calcium – from supplements or dairy products – then exercise, hormone replacement, and if all else fails Fosomax or related drugs. That thinking advanced with the publication of Preventing and Reversing Osteoporosis : What You Can Do About Bone Loss by Alan Gaby, M.D. about ten years ago. Gaby questioned the protective value of estrogen, showing that HRT preserves but doesn’t create new bone cells growth, and results in a brittle patchwork of old bone cells that aren’t qualitatively stronger or fracture resistant. He showed that new and healthy bone cells can be built through lifestyle and diet. Now, nutritionist Amy Lanou, Ph.D., questions the calcium hypothesis in her new book Building Bone Vitality: A Revolutionary Diet Plan to Prevent Bone Loss and Reverse Osteoporosis – Without Dairy Foods, Calcium, Estrogen, or Drugs. A senior researcher for the Physician’s Committee on Responsible Medicine, she noticed that people in countries that consume the least dairy products have the lowest incidence of osteoporosis – and that the reverse is also true: people in countries who eat the most diary products suffer the highest rates of fractures. She also discovered that taking more than 500mg per day of calcium doesn’t reduce risk of fracture.

Dr. Lanou delves deeply into how food – and what foods – push calcium into bone cells. She insists that interventions be measured by reduced risk of fracture rather than only increased bone density. The issue isn’t how much calcium you take in, but keeping that calcium in the bone and creating new cells. Supplements and HRT keep calcium in the blood and preserve old bone cells. There are obvious implications here as well as to the kinds of test you choose to measure density – in the bone or the blood. We’ll address this in a future post.

Like Dr. Gaby, Dr. Lanou concludes that an optimum diet is one that reduces acidity in the blood. Foods like animal products, processed foods, and sugars that increase blood acidity take calcium from bone in an attempt to alkalinize the blood, then excretes it in the urine. The optimum diet to promote continual new bone cells growth is high in fruits and vegetables and low in animal foods, dairy products and processed foods.

There’s a lots of good material here, including an eating plan providing the array of nutrients vital to bone health. She doesn’t minimize other factors in bone health such as the key role of exercise, what types of exercise, the blood acidifying consequences of stress, the role of depression, chronic illness, as well as other hazards and risk factors.

You can find out more by listening to this 28 minute clip of Dr. Landou talking about her findings here.

To find out about the medical uses of yoga to prevent and reverse osteoporosis, or to participate in a study, click here.

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Comments

3 Comments so far

  1. Jacqueline on August 27, 2009 8:53 pm

    Enjoying your book recs. Also try Better Bones by Dr. Susan Brown. She has a wonderful site filled with articles (http://www.betterbones.com). In brief, she also believes adjusting the body’s Ph and balancing acid/alkaline in the blood is vital to bone health.

    Hi Jacqueline,
    Yes, she’s got a similar message, and a great site. Thanks for taking the time to offer it. Kathleen

  2. Elaine Kennett on January 12, 2010 4:25 am

    Has anyone experienced contaction of the esophogus when taking calcium supplements(bonviva)

  3. Christine O'Brien on February 17, 2010 9:27 pm

    I was just diagnosed with osteoporosis few months ago and i am researching the recommendations from my Dr. and what a trip to hear the sad painful side effects. I just want to build up my bones.how crazy is this???

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