The array of forms, notes, tests and histories can be dizzying and difficult to know what to keep track of and how to organize.  Fortunately, Gail Coffey, a long time health advocate has made the task a little simpler.  She has compiled a manual for organizing the important records and information.   Sharing Wellness Info: Ready for Health Emergencies is a book designed to help you have the information you need ready when emergencies occur.  It will help Emergency Medical Technicians help you or a loved one if for some reason you  are unable to communicate your medical history, insurance information, and type of care you desire.   It is a good value for the money – $6.50.  In her words,  “I’m not interested in making money on it- I just want people to be prepared.”   How often do you hear that these days?

Gail along with Lyndy Kimball-Pacheco are the cofounders of SharingWellnessInfo.com.  They are passionate about their mission of health and wellness education and awareness.  You can find a wealth of information on the site about alternative and holistic modalities including tips about finding and working with a  practitioner.

What took them so long? The data behind the decision certainly isn’t “new”.  Since 2006 studies began pointing to the increased incidence of fractures in the hip, wrist and spine. The first of these drugs appeared on the market in 1989 and from the very beginning some researchers hypothesized about the possibility of the drugs causing nutrient absorption problems with long term use.  Stomach acid has a purpose -  among other things it helps break down food so that nutrients can be better absorbed.  So logically if stomach acid is suppressed so is the absorption of some  nutrients.  Calcium is particularly sensitive to stomach acid.  Without it, absorption is much less.   Hmmm— and now we have incidence of increased fractures with the long term use of these drugs – golly how could that happen?

The official FDA approved prescribing information for these drugs indicates that they are only for short term use- four to eight weeks. There is just one little catch- nobody followed the rules.  I have seen many patients on these drugs for years!

Where did the system go wrong? How is it that we have allowed the mis-prescribing  and over-prescribing of these drugs to go on for so many years,  knowing full well that there might be  serious sequela involving  disruption of the absorption of important key nutrients such as calcium?

We could blame it on the doctors for recklessly prescribing these drugs, and that is certainly part of the problem, but there are deeper underlying issues here as well.  In fact  these drugs are very effective for relieving symptoms of acid reflux(aka heartburn)and GERD in the short term with very few side effects.  However,  patients ask  doctors to renew their prescriptions beyond the four to eight  week limitation because when they stop taking them their heartburn often gets worse.  Let me  repeat that – patient’s symptoms often get worse when they stop taking these drugs.

There is growing evidence that the cause of GERD is not excess gastric acid but increased abdominal pressure caused by lack of acid-yes that’s right I said lack of gastric acid.  It  is much too complex to explain in this post, but I will dedicate future posts to the subject.  So in short these drugs may be going after the wrong target.  But in the eyes of the pharmaceutical industry it is exactly the right target.

Could there be any better drug for the company coffers?  The symptoms go away almost magically with very few short term side effects and patients can’t stop taking it without their symptoms coming back and often getting worse.  So wink, wink everyone ignores the rules and the PPIs have become a source of billions  of dollars  of revenue to the pharmaceutical industry.

Drugs for acid reflux and GERD are cash cows for the pharmaceutical companies. More than 60 million prescriptions for GERD were filled in 2004. Americans spent $13 billion on acid-stopping medications in 2006. Nexium, the most popular, brought in $5.1 billion alone – making it the second highest selling drug behind Lipitor.

Big pharma board rooms celebrate their wonderful success.  Physicians are delighted that they can solve a problem with a 5 minute visit and a simple prescription – well within the health insurance reimbursement for their time.  Pharmacies are pleased by the growing drug business.

Everybody is happy- except perhaps for the patient who now has osteoporosis and other serious side effects caused by these drugs.   Oh well,  you can’t please everybody.

You can find out more about the changes around your eyes, jaws, cheeks – and teeth! – that a plastic surgeon and Smithsonian physical anthropologists discovered. It’s an interesting read.

I do have a quibble however. And it happens to fit in very nicely with promoting our bone health program that starts in two days:
Women Doing It For Themselves: 8 Steps to Building Strong Bones for Lifelong Vitality

First of all, building your bone health and density matters. It’s maddening how this physician minimizes and dismisses ‘exercise and drinking all the milk you want’ out of hand, to suggest that there’s nothing you can do to maintain your mass. Osteoporosis itself is not a natural part of aging. Read more myths here. I’m not suggesting I know that building your bone density will maintain your facial bone structure, on the other hand, I have no reason to believe it won’t. As osteoporosis seems to be evenly distributed throughout your body, why wouldn’t it be natural to assume that building bone density would equally build bone mass everywhere? You can be sure that this physician has no data to back up his remarks. He’s a plastic surgeon, not a nutritionist and this area of inquiry is new. Yes, aging is a natural phenomenon, and people age in many different ways, most of it related to lifestyle – particularly in the areas of nutrition and exercise.

It’s also not just about milk, it’s about the 24 essential nutrients you need for healthy bones. And exercise, like the yoga facial stretches we posted on earlier. They matter. Bone metabolism and mineralization depends to some degree on movement, and to the extent that you exercise – and perhaps also get facial massages – your face, bone growth will be stimulated.

I’d rather he posed these as interesting questions for further study: Wouldn’t it be interesting to study how a bone building regimen affects bone density in the skull? I wonder what kind of specific facial exercises would help preserve density? Could stimulation from massage have a similar regenerative effect as exercise?

I know it’s a lot to ask from doctors who have had from from 0 to a handful of hours of nutrition education in medical school, as is the norm. Physicians are so conditioned by ideas of entropy and an interventionist approach to health and healing that it’s only a very special sort of physician that thinks to ask how we might support the body’s own abilities to regenerate itself.

She recommends supplementing with calcium and magnesium in a 1:1 ratio as optimal, though a 2:1 ratio (i.e., 800 mg of calcium to 400 mg of magnesium) of magnesium oxide or chloride, or chelated magnesium, is adequate.

She offers additional recommendations to ensure particularly active or stressed women get enough magnesium, including taking it in divided doses, like calcium, throughout the day, and to add Epsom salts to your baths, which is essentially magnesium sulfate.

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Women Doing It for Themselves: 8 Steps to Building Strong Bones for Lifelong Vitality

Next program begins April 20, 2010

While there is plenty of information on bone health available, finding help that’s specific to your lifestyle and your body’s own metabolic needs – and putting those recommendations into practice – isn’t always that simple.

If you are one of the millions of women diagnosed every year with low bone mass – osteoporosis or osteopenia – please know that you don’t have to rely on risky drugs for the rest of your life. They are not your only option. Join veteran nutrition educator, Dr. Judith Valentine and a support group of other women doing it for themselves to take charge of your bone health.

With a step by step program of assessments and action steps, you don’t have to fear osteoporosis – or the recommended drug therapies to treat it.  This unique bone building program helps you to cut to the chase in choosing foods and supplements that meet your own body’s individual metabolic needs – and your lifestyle.   Find out more.

Merck is currently fielding hundreds of lawsuits related to death of jaw bone tissue. Trials begin anew later in the spring.

In fact, for some of the clearest data on reported side effects from the biphosphonate class of drugs – which the FDA alerts includes as Actonel, Actonel+Ca, Aredia, Boniva, Didronel, Fosamax, Fosamax+D, Reclast, Skelid, and Zometa – the Fosamax Lawsuit Update tracks the events, beginning with studies in 2005, that caused the FDA to examine and update its labeling for biphosphonates.

The severe pain some women experience can occur within days, months, or years of taking these drugs. While some women’s symptoms completely resolve after discontinuing the drugs, others’ pain continues. And while bisphosphonates are routinely given to menopausal and postmenopausal women, there is no research indicating how long they should take them. With the increasing side effects, many doctors are now recommending a five-year limit.

A look at bone physiology

Our team at aheadofthecurveatmidlife, which includes a pharmacist, acupuncturist, and nutritionist, is committed to getting out the straight facts about osteoporosis and osteopenia, and the choices women have in addressing their own risks as well as taking control of their own care.

Our commitment is redoubled when we read a doctor say, as in the current media report, that some women taking biphosphonate drugs lose “their ability to regenerate their skeleton …” and that “normally your bone is constantly being remade .. [but] “these patients don’t remake their bone and they acquire damage, microdamage, the collagen gets altered and we need to rejuvenate the skeleton.”

While this is undoubtedly true, there is more to the story.

It’s true that with age new bone cell growth slows down – but not completely.  If you take a look at bone physiology, you see that new bone cells are constantly being made, and old cells are being eliminated.  This is the balance that creates healthy bones, and it continues throughout our lives.  The action of biphosphonates, however, is to preserve the old cells – to prevent them from being eliminated – and not to create healthy new bone cells. It some respects, it also slows the growth of healthy new cells. So, it’s not surprising that studies are showing that poor quality, or ‘brittle bones,’ are causing the fractures that occur in women who take these drugs.

Osteoporosis and Osteopenia as Warning Signs

In fact, the slowed rate of new bone cell growth can often be attributed to lifestyle factors, like getting the 24 micro-nutrients through your diet, or supplements – not only calcium – that are needed to grow new bone.  For example, see  Vitamin D and You at Midlife. As we age our habits do indeed catch up with us – see Soft Drinks: America’s Other Drinking Problem. In addition, loss of calcium from bones may be considered the body’s first line of response in balancing the pH of the blood, which it considers more important in its hierarchy of survival needs than bone. Higher than normal pH – that is, slightly acid blood usually caused by eating processed foods, sugars, and unmanaged stress – causes calcium to be moved out of the bone to restore balance in the blood.

From this perspective, osteopenia and osteoporosis are warning signs for women – and men – to step back and take a look at how they may be contributing to their condition – and then to commit to taking action to modify known lifestyle factors that impact bone health. Women who want to rejuvenate their bones and their overall health can do it without relying on pharmaceutical interventions that may or may not benefit them, and that carry their own risks.

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Sign up to read our free report, The Selling of Osteoporosis, to help to sort out the often misleading claims as well as the true benefits of osteoporosis drugs. 

To learn about a drug-free and natural way to prevent – or even reverse – osteoporosis and osteopenia without side effects, master the essentials in our Women Doing It For Themselves – 8 Steps to Building Bone Health for Lifelong Vitality program.

Menopause is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be unbearable. Women’s symptoms can vary greatly; learn how to identify yours and make informed decisions about hormone replacement therapy and other strategies for coping with frustrating symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats and fatigue.

* The more psychic baggage you carry, the longer you have to wait for anything in your life. You are pulling a hologram of history. To move forward, you need to bring all of your energy into present time.
* You can’t just name your purpose, because purpose is a mystical idea, but you can perceive it. Also, (as Carol Adrienne says), your purpose is not only one thing.
* The idea that you heal automatically when you have an insight into your past is akin to magical thinking. You need to move from the darkness into your graces. It requires a different kind of energy to break through into present time.
* When marriages fall apart, it’s a collision of mythical archetypes saying, ‘hey, this isn’t the way the script for my myth was written.”
* Frustration is good, passivity is bad. Your frustration may be alerting you to an archetypal power shift, a shift in roles.
* A job doesn’t bring power to effect change, it’s about survival. When people begin to seek more power, they sense its limitations and begin to seek meaning and purpose. It’s the beginning of a yearning to be called, and it usually arrives in the form of a crisis.

One technique of mindfulness is to pay attention to your moment to moment experiences, whether to the running mental commentary in your head, or a reaction to an event, and to label how you feel at that moment. You may say, “I’m feeling angry right now”, or “I’m stressed” or “This is joy.” An important aspect of the practice is withholding judgment or reacting to your feeling, you simply become aware of the feeling, label it, and “let it go.”

Being mindful brings all sorts of prefrontal resources to turn down the amygdala’s anxiety response. Being present with the negative or threatening feelings by putting them into words puts the brakes on your emotional responses, so you feel less angry, or less sad, or less frightened.

Putting feelings into words also helps us heal. Health benefits including reducing chronic pain conditions, skin diseases and stress-related symptoms – consistent with what mindfulness meditation teachers have taught for thousands of years about the value of being here now.

Journaling about painful feelings, or talking about them makes people feel better – apart from any insights they may experience in the process.