How To Keep Your Bones Healthy and Strong
Osteoporosis affects nearly 44 million people worldwide and nearly 10 million right here in the United States. Those stats are anything but insignificant and many people are looking for answers and treatments by the time they hit mid life. Conventional treatment includes the prescription of bisphosphonates, but they can of course result in multiple unwanted side effects.
If you’re looking for a more natural approach, Ed brings some really great recommendations on today’s episode. From a variety of supplements, to extremely simple and practical exercise suggestions, this is your natural guide to keeping your bones healthy and strong!
Some Points Ed Discusses:
What are the 4 causes of bone loss? (6:33)
Why is osteoporosis not a calcium deficiency and what are the dangers of excess calcium? (10:17)
How do osteoporosis drugs work? (12:37)
What are the 3 things you need to help regrow your bones? (17:46)
What diet plan would Ed recommend? (26:43)
Some Key Takeaways From This Episode:
Osteoporosis is not a disease and it’s not a calcium deficiency. (3:32)
Chronic stress can lead to bone loss. (7:36)
You need to do weight bearing exercises to regrow your bone. (18:00)
Vitamin K helps direct calcium to the right places in the body. (20:34)
Calcium has a role in rebuilding bone mass, but it’s not the most important. (24:56)
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CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Brian Strickland 00:00 Hey everyone, welcome back to the holistic navigator podcast where we believe in the body's capacity for self healing, if it's given the proper nutrients and care it deserves. My name is Brian Strickland, and I'm a producer of the show. And here with me in the studio, as always, is your host, Ed Jones. It's flying solo today, but he wanted to talk about something that affects nearly 44 million people worldwide. And that's osteoporosis. Once you hit the age 50, osteoporosis becomes a major concern for many people. And so Ed wanted to break down, why it occurs, what can be done about it, and bring some information that you may not hear anywhere else. And, of course, plenty of natural options and steps that you can take practically, to help support a healthy skeletal system. We have a ton of information to cover today. We hope that you enjoyed this episode, let me go ahead and pass it off to our host, Mr. Ed Jones.
Ed Jones 00:59 Welcome, everyone to the Holistic Navigator. This is your host, Ed Jones. And we are over 100 episodes of something that is near and dear to my heart, which is to empower you, the listeners with many, many topics for your health things and information that you may not and probably are not getting from your normal sources of information. Well, today we're going to talk about something that I've had on my list for quite some time. And it is on the topic of osteoporosis. This is a very serious concern for a lot of people past the age of 50. In fact, about 44 million women and men, some men have osteoporosis that at some point could cause a fracture. And that is something that's very serious. Well, before we begin, I want to say, fact number one, and you're going to hear things here on the holistic navigator. That certainly is not the headline, mainstream type of info information that you're probably going to read on WebMD. And all the things you may Google. And reason is, is because follow the money trail. Anytime there's a very, very profitable treatment, you seem the truth gets lost in the fog of profits, it just simply does. And the medical inertia that goes on is pretty hard to divert into anything else. Well, fact number one is that osteoporosis and osteopenia are not really true diseases anymore, then decaying teeth are a disease. We can call it something, it's perfectly fine. But it isn't just happening on its own. There are reasons, and most of those reasons are not bad luck. And they're not bad genes. They're simply a lifestyle that has created this disturbance. And it's not always the fault of the individual. Because we simply a lot of information is being censored. And when you go to the people you supposedly trust with your health, they are also in a broken system that they really don't even realize that what's going on within their own world. So they're just learning and learning and Reese re spouting out everything that they're learning, which still comes from the same kind of broken system. So one fact number one again, osteoporosis is not a disease. And it's certainly Secondly, not a calcium deficiency. We got to remember that bones are living tissue, they're not pieces of rock. And they're made up of two different cells in the bones called osteoclast. And osteoblast. Well, one of those, the osteoblast is the one that makes new bone and osteoclast degrades the old bone. And when you go and you're especially a woman in your past 50 Go into get a regular exam and the doc says, I want to do a DEXA or an osteoporosis scan, what you're going to get back is something called a T score. And what a t score is, is going to tell how much higher or lower your bone mass is compared to a 30 year old. If it's a minus one and above it's normal minus one two minus 2.5 is osteopenia, which is not brittle bone yet, but as you're losing bone mass and then minus 2.5 is full blown osteoporosis. And, you know, I don't know most of us who have had older relatives in our life we have seen with our own eyes very starkly. The risk of death is fairly substantial when an older person breaks their hip. Why is that? It's really not because of the break. It's because of the fact that they're immobile, increases the risk of pneumonia, and also of course restricts longs reduces digestion, depression is a huge factor, because in one single second, their whole life has just been turned upside down. And the one major point I want to keep reiterating here is that this is preventable. In almost all cases, there is windows of opportunity for this prevention and also windows of opportunity to help address this bone loss. But those windows can close at a certain point. So I encourage people, you can't wait till the hip is broken. To start this, this is a true true preventative program. And I'm going to tell you the three steps that is necessary for you to check off the box. And I'm not going to probably have to worry about osteoporosis. And we're going to do it with of course advice that won't include some of the risky drugs that are being recommended. Now, we'll say at this point, I'm not giving medical advice, I encourage you to find healthcare practitioners that you trust and are also are familiar with more in their toolbox than what just came from their medical teachings. And the term functional medicine is one I really appreciate. In fact, I've had a great interview on the holistic navigator with Dr. Pucci and a couple other physicians who are functional medicine practitioners, I encourage you to listen if you really want to actually connect with a physician or learn what this practice is go to the holistic navigator and look up Dr. Pucci on functional medicine. Alright, what are the causes the true causes of osteoporosis? You go to most of the traditional people who are speaking to you and they're usually gonna probably throw out half of them will say, you know, genes play a role in it a little bit of bad luck, you know, a little bit of this little bit of that they don't really delve into it and that's where I love functional medicine, functional medicine ask why. And traditional medicine ask what I want to know the why of something. That's how we fix it. So what are the four causes of bone loss? One steroids. Ah, here we go back to the medical model of super prescribers you go in you have anything going on 80% of all visits to the doctor are going to end with a steroid or an antibiotic recommendation with a prescription. Those are can be devastating short run, not a big deal with long run they are devastating to bone loss, if you get prednisone or cortisone basically, is corrosive to your bones. Well, guess what? When you're under chronic stress, year in and year out, your body produces something that is its own steroid, it's called cortisol comes from the adrenal glands. In fact, it had a great podcast on adrenal fatigue, which is people who have the opposite. They've been under stress for so long that they can't make the right amount of cortisol. And you can certainly listen to that on the holistic navigator. If you just Google adrenal fatigue and the wholistic navigator, it pops right up. So when you make your own steroids, it contributes to bone loss. What do we do about that? Of course, there's in 10,000 different ideas on how do we manage our stress levels. One is we need to improve our sleep. And that is, again, one of my chapters if you want to delve into that, but without sleep, you're making way too much of your own steroid. Third PPIs protein, proton pump inhibitors, those are the fancy drugs that reduce heartburn and reflux, wonderful drugs for two weeks. That's it. It's even a warning on the box that you should not take it longer. Why is that? It inhibits the absorption of minerals. Well, as we all know, bones are consist a lot of it is in minerals, not vitamins, not fatty acids, not anything else. It's straight minerals, and PPIs will decrease that absorption rate significantly. I do have a podcast on GERD. That helps people get off of these because it's a weaning process that probably can take three to four months because your body is addicted to them. Fourthly, anti depressants, antidepressants increase the risk of osteoporosis. So really, and truly, we're talking about drug after drug after drug. And I constantly say I weigh risk against benefit of most things in my life, but especially nutrients and also drugs, and many of the drugs simply have too high of a risk for the benefit. And lastly is bariatric surgery for weight loss because that inhibits the ability sometimes of absorption and intake. If you don't do the right supplementation, you are doomed to osteoporosis. So we've covered the number one reason basically drugs. Two is lack of weight bearing exercise that I'm going to speak more about a tip that I developed many, many years ago, probably 20 plus yours on how and how I have an easy option for men and women. To solve this without having to go to the gym, I'm going to hold that till just a little bit lighter. Third, nutritional issues. Again, I'll repeat, osteoporosis is not a deficiency of calcium. One reason that logically you can see this is because when you study the diets of the countries, all over the world, the people who have the highest level of calcium construct consumption with foods and supplements also seem to have the higher levels of osteoporosis. Many of the countries that actually don't consume dairy, they are beating us all the way around on this level. So there's so much more to this equation than calcium. And I'm going to get into the details to help you through the fog of this is not that difficult people. But it's very, very important that you create the synergy and the balance between several nutrients, or else it's actually going to do you harm. Fourth is the diet. You know, we have many ideas on diets. But if you have the wrong diet expressly want to process foods, heavy, heavy loaded with carbohydrates. Those are the things that create acidity in the body. Well guess what acidity does, it pretty much melts bone away, we need to have a ph which is more neutral, or at least getting close to that. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that in a second on how we can do this with supplementation and choosing the right foods. Guess what too much calcium can cause a real disturbance to believe it or not, because that's all those years of people talking to me when they said their doctor said I need 1200 to 1500 milligrams of calcium a day. And I said, along with what else? Nothing, he just said get 1200 milligrams of calcium. Well guess what that does at research is very, very clear, increases the risk of kidney stones. And a lot of the arterial plaque is made of calcium. And that's calcification within the arteries as actually increases heart attack risk by about 20%. If it's calcium by itself in large amounts. You know, we get a lot of that from milk and acids. People who eat Tums for their heartburn, or Oh, Dean on calcium, again, going to the wrong places, causing a lot of negative things. Before I get into the specifics of the three steps. Again, to help you with this issue. We got to talk about what you will be told at the physician's office, there's a drug classification called bisphosphonates. We all know probably the number one drug which was invented in 1995. And it was Fosamax, when Fosamax was first brought to market as an osteoporosis drug. It didn't do very well in physicians offices. Well, the there's not a smarter business people for profits than the pharmaceutical industry. So guess what they did. They started giving away scanning equipment in medical offices. We'll all of a sudden, and certainly even before this, the pharmaceutical companies realize that fear sells better than any method on Earth. We certainly have seen that through the epidemic, we've gone through how people have just caved in, and they quit thinking on themselves. And they put their trust into into a past of government and other officials that have a very checkered history that we shouldn't trust. And so Fosamax was brought to market they put these machines in the medical offices, all of a sudden, sales soared. Why? Because all of a sudden, they were testing women and that woman would doc would say, you're at risk for osteoporosis. If you break a hip, you have about a 30% chance of dying. Well, that's pretty much scary for anyone to hear. And of course, the patient says, what do we do about it? And they said, Well, we have this wonderful drug. But you know what, that is not a wonderful drug, including its relatives, all of which are bisphosphonates. And what those drugs do is they slow down the process of how old bone is being removed. When you take when you don't take a bisphosphonate, you hope to have a bounce between new bone growth and old bone decaying away? Well, with this phosphonates you the body's allowing the old bone to remain, and hopefully building some new bone with whatever other methods that has been worked on. But one tip you have to have to have to keep remembering is that the golden my golden sentence for this is bone quality is far more important than your score. Because what bisphosphonates do is actually build bigger bone. They do. Your t score will improve with bisphosphonates. But the truth is they build Brittle Bone. In fact, the the British Medical Journal, which is one of the most respected, peer reviewed medical journals, and spin out, says 1840 and they did a meta analysis of no fewer than 33 studies that was published in the British Medical Journal, and it said bisphosphonates are a class of osteoporosis drugs like but navan, Fosamax and reclassed. And it has to do of course, with remodelling of the bone. Well, the mainstream medicine is over diagnosing and over medicating. And despite the very, very real dangers of taking bisphosphonates. They just keep expanding the criteria of how osteoporosis is diagnosed through these machines and putting people on more of these drugs. And in fact, the British Medical Journal put actual numbers to the crude approach. It said that their analysis indicates it would take 175 postmenopausal women with bone fragility must be treated for three years to prevent one fracture 175 Women must be taking this drug that's risky to prevent one hip fracture. Isn't that amazing? And isn't it sad. And the thing is, the bisphosphonates are associated with so many gastrointestinal problems and nausea, indigestion. But one of the most debilitating side effects is the necrosis of the jaw bone, which means the jaw bone basically melts away. And I tell people, constantly when I talk to them about this, I know it doesn't sound like as major as it is, if your jaw bone melts away, your life is over. It pretty much is you can't eat you have constant pain, you're having tons of symptoms and a cannot, cannot be fixed, and is simply disgraceful that is altering the lives of people. And that's just the truth of it. And that's something that we have to you can look into, and there's no controversy about it. And so what do we do? We decide, okay, I'm concerned about bisphosphonates. I'm going to look for alternative. And that is why we are here, obviously, well, the three step plan that I have seen and observed very, very clearly over 1000s of individuals who share their health journey with me, for many areas, but also on regrowing bone. As you need three things, you got to have an exercise program people. And now what I speak about is, is the effective exercise program, it does not and I say this with very much kindness. If you're out walking on the track three miles a day, you're cutting grass, you're doing gardening, you're even playing tennis, sorry, it's not gonna help your bones a bit, not one single bit, it's going to help your skin it's going to help your muscles it's going to help your tone, you're going to probably look better, it's going to probably help your heart. But the reason bones don't improve with that is the same reason opposite of what happens when astronauts go to outer space and they have no gravity. Within a week or two have no gravity, the bones start to thin because the bones are so connected to what weight it has to bear. That so the reason that we need to develop an exercise program differently than what most people do is because of this exact practice of anti gravity and what it's showing. And I came up with this idea 20 years ago, and I've seen it work. Hey, if you're a gym, not go to the gym, get a trainer who can put you on heavier weights because the only way the bones the cells, the osteoclast osteoblast will hold and build calcium is if it has to think that it's going to hold more weight than what you weigh. If you're a woman you weigh 120 pounds. You got to tell those bones you weigh 140 pounds, I'm sorry, if you weigh 200 pounds, you're going to have to tell me why 230. And the way to do that is with an athletic weight vest. You can do that through ordering going to the sports store. What you want is you want an evenly distributed 25 pounds that will sit on your back in front in a balanced fashion. And you're going to wear this for 30 to 40 minutes per day, at least five days a week. You can do it watch standing watching TV, you can still walk the track you have to be a little more careful to not strain other things. As long as you're standing is going to build almost all of the bones except the arms. And it's easy. It's Simple and requires no skill levels at all. So, subject your bones to 20 to 25 more pounds daily for five days a week. And then even if you do nothing else different, you are going to tell those bones, hey, we got to thicken, or else we're going to break it guess what they do out of their wisdom, they're going to thicken number two, we got to, again, repeat calcium is of little value, and actually has that potential risk that I spoke about as far as the nutrients. So what are the nutrients? Well, I'll tell you, one of the major ones. And there's there's about five that you have to consider. One of the number one is vitamin K, I did a wonderful interview with Dr. Kate from Canada. And you can just Google again the holistic navigator vitamin K and it pops right up on your phone. And we we learn significant information of the life savings effects of vitamin K. Vitamin K sometimes is concerned about with people because all the Coumadin and warfarin, which are the blood thinners they always have big Warnings Don't take vitamin K with this well. 99 point 99% of people listening are not on vitamin K, again, check with your doctor if you're going to add all these things because I don't know who you aren't. And you need to if you're not really super skilled in it, find somebody who is. But Vitamin K is going to help send the calcium to the correct places in the body. What do we mean by that? If the Ks not there, and it's low and you eat calcium foods, which I encourage, you may take some calcium modest amounts and supplements I encourage. But what if they don't go to the right place? What if they go to the kidney stones? What if they go to the plaque, we can prevent that with ingestion of vitamin K one, and I like k two. And you do that every day supplementally If you happen to have to be put on blood thinners temporarily you just get off of it. That's what you do got to have vitamin K. So that's number one. Number two is magnesium. Magnesium is probably the king mineral of the universe. And I actually did a podcast again on magnesium, the 300 systems of the body rely on the proper magnesium, not the Brock hard, poor quality but the extremely high quality types that are found in some places and some places not. Again, the holistic Navigator is sponsored by nutritionw.com That does vet every single supplement before they put it into their website or market. So if you want to have trustworthy source of products, nutrition w.com is the one so we've covered vitamin K and covered magnesium in the right amounts. Here's something that many have not heard of strontium. Strontium is an interesting mineral it actually kind of works like one of the drugs the bisphosphonates but it doesn't have the side effect of of what we just spoke about with the other drugs. Now, strontium is not a perfect product, you can read some negative things about it but the negative articles about strontium we're using a a non natural form in very high doses. My personal opinion is and I've observed it sodium in the proper mixture will build bone mass and bone quality up to a point. There are concerns that if you're on it more than five years, we might need to take some breaks on it. Certainly we'll keep up on the literature on that to advise as time goes on. So you got vitamin K, you've got strontium, you get magnesium. One of the other things that we must realize with bone is 30% of your bone is collagen. Yes the same collagen we talk about for wrinkles and hair and nails, joints. Will it comprises 30% At least of your bones. So when people are really having these bone fractures of any place that have to be the hip, it could be the wrist it can be other bones. Collagen has weakened it has left the body and when it does, it creates again more brittle bone. So we need to build that and silica is one of the major minerals that can build bone collagen. Now I like collagen also but I'm more of a fan of silica or a certain brand called Bio sill and I did a wonderful interview with Richard passwater on this topic of of collagen and bone mass again under the the holistic navigator you just put in the word and then you put in college and then you can listen to that. He tells the dosing he tells exactly how it works and what it does. It is remarkable. So here we are. We've already talked about the four main nutrients and have not even mentioned calcium. Calcium is going to need to be part of this. Now calcium is In my opinion, cannot be the very poor quality sources of carbonates. And some of the ones that are found almost everywhere, it needs to be coming from correct sources, from algae from highly absorbable forms of it. And that is certainly available, it's not hard to find, but you got to make sure you do the right ones. And I'm not here to push any particular brand, but I'm going to save that Garden of Life. And I'm just going to read the front of the box because all their attorneys have checked it out, says grow BOne system clinically studied bone growth regimen. And it's a raw whole food plant calcium plus all of the elemental strontium, increase bone mineral density, that's their label reading it, not me. And that's one of the my favorite products. It's not cheap, but I have seen it work extremely well. In fact, six months of it, I think, would advise people probably will stop the future loss, another six months, will potentially help you to improve a score. And that is pretty exciting stuff. It's a two bottle system, and you have to do it as directions show. And occasionally, you have to start out with half dosing till you kind of get used to it. So covering the nutrients, please people know that if you're doing calcium by itself, stop it immediately, it's better to do nothing. And because you're messing up other parts of the body, then to do calcium and with exercise, just your foods alone are going to be helpful. But when you combine the exercise with the vast or heavy training in a gym, and then you combine the right nutrients, and then lastly will be to address the diet. Well, you know, we have a myriad of ideas of everyone thinking they know what's the best diet? Well, there's not one best diet. I know from my 42 years experience, we have to kind of personalize this. I have people who do keto that a few of them, it's I look at their blood work, and it's horrible. They just do not genetically respond to a keto diet. But here's my general guidelines is we need to be eating less carbs, doesn't mean you have to be on keto. But I eat about 60 carbs Monday through Friday and about 150 on Saturday and Sunday. You certainly can have more budget than that, but eating too many carbs. Why does that affect bone mass because one, most of the carbs will produce acidity in the body. Again, acidity is corrosive, and it will start to basically melt away bone. So we want something that's a little bit higher protein diet a little bit higher, healthy fat, all of all I do every day with lunch and supper, I'll do avocados every day, make sure I never eat a meal without some healthy fat organic butter. Because it slows blood sugars, it lowers them it brain is half fat, it needs it the low fat craze of a 70s as one of the biggest reasons we have such a declining health in this country. Because we spent 20 years believing that we need to eat less fat when you eat less fat, you have to eat something to replace it which was carbs. So I encourage people to you know lower the carb intake increase their quality protein and when I say that, hey all I was a chicken eater forever thinking oh chickens healthier than everything else it's not, we've come to find out chicken has too much Omega six, which is inflammatory and not enough Omega three beef actually has more omega three and less of the Omega six and beef is is a higher quality protein. It does much better for our bodies and there are less chemicals and beef in there on those poor chickens that are kept in those little tiny cages from birth to death. It is the worst environment for raising something there is lastly in that category of diet. I am a staunch believer in green drinks. And there is a green drink that is my all time favorite. I have two brands, natural factors and green vibrance most of the time I use green vibrance because it has probiotics in it. I don't trust a lot of green drinks because I've visited the farms I want to see how they grow them how they make it. And I am very very convinced these two are some of the best and Garden of Life would be number three on the quality of greens but you need to consume greens every day. Protects Your kidneys protects your liver, but it also takes away acidity. Greens are one of the most alkaline foods on Earth. And yes, you can eat them. But I want to ensure with my morning drink that if I get too busy if I'm in the wrong place and I can't find the right foods, I've at least covered half my bases with my green drink. And you know I talk a lot about in my personal consultations that health and many of the options we have are somewhat like an orchestra That's playing music. And if we had an orchestra with about 300, musicians and instruments, and you realized one day that the music was very out of tune, you probably would not be able to find one musician that was the cause of the problem. You'd have to go in and really look at most of them, work with them tune up what you need to perhaps, train somebody, perhaps get rid of somebody bring somebody else on. Well, that's health. Health is a combination of synergistic. REAL relationship, touching one piece to every other piece to this massive complex body that we have. We are not Ford f150 trucks, as traditional medicine believes you go in and you have something wrong with your heart valve. Well, they're going to go in and fix it just as your mechanic would on your car. The problem is something again caused things to happen in a negative fashion. Yeah, we're going to wear out at certain point, but we shouldn't be wearing out at 40 and 50, and 60. And looking into the whys is one of the key reasons that I love studying nutrition. I love being a detective, because there are answers out there. And the way to truly heal and not treat symptoms only is to look into the why. So as far as osteoporosis, I encourage everybody, one, don't get into the fear of the media, the internet, the health care practitioner, if you have a t score, that's not good. Talk to them, if they're open minded, if not find somebody who is learn on your own, start the program with weights, start the program with nutrient supplementation, and then start the program with improving your diet. And that pretty much I think will cover the bases very well. I hope I've kept it simple enough. Again, lastly, it will take six months to one year to see results. I would suggest probably to wait one whole year from one scan to the other once you started. And that would be an absolute thrill for most people when they do that because they do come back and say wow, one is I definitely stopped loss and about half those people said I regained a significant amount of bone mass and they're most people tell you you can't do that. You can't people let me tell you, you can. Well, that does it for this edition of the illicit navigator on osteoporosis. Hang in there people we got better times coming always. And if you can just be brave, be bold and be prepared on health and other topics in life. We got a great future ahead beat always optimistic. Thank you for joining me for all of the exciting episodes that I have worked hard to put together and we got more coming down the pike. Thank you again. This is Ed with the holistic navigator.
Brian Strickland 32:58 The information on this podcast and the topics discussed have not been evaluated by the FDA or anyone in the medical profession and does not aim to replace any advice you may receive from your medical practitioner. The holistic navigator assumes no responsibility or liability whatsoever on behalf of any listener of these materials. The listing Navigator is not a doctor, nor does it claim to be please consult your physician before beginning any health regimen.