Bone Density Medications; Injections for Osteoporosis News

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Forteo was approved in 2002 as a one-time injection for osteoporosis that was the first new bone density medication to come along in awhile.

When I first heard about this drug I had my concerns.  Mainly because of the increased risk of cancer from forcing bone to do what it was not meant to do.  Of even bigger concern is that any “bone density medication approach” to low bone density is just not the right approach.  These medications do absolutely nothing to fix the problem that ate away at your bone in the first place.

Bone is not a static tissue, merely hanging around to provide support to keep you upright and attach muscles to.  The past decade has been filled with research on just how much bone is integrated in with the rest of your body.  As crazy as this may sound, your bones are intricately connected to your GI tract, your risk of diabetes and your fertility.  And probably much more that we aren’t aware of just yet.

In other words, if you have been diagnosed with osteopenia or osteoporosis, there is something very much wrong with the way your body is functioning as a whole.  It could mean that you’re stressed and your gut is inflamed.  It could mean that your prescription for SSRIs or acid-blocking drugs has destroyed your bones.  It could mean you’ve got runaway inflammation and this is sucking the calcium out of your bones.  It could mean you’re deficient in vitamin D.  It could mean you eat too many animal products.  And on and on.

Hopefully you get the idea that bone density is a systemic problem and in now way do any of the bone density medications fix the underlying problem.  Even if bone density medications increase your bone density for a short period of time, unless you fix the underlying situation that put the low bone density there in the first place there are going to be problems in the future.

And, if the bone density medication that your doctor chose just happens to be the injection for osteoporosis, aka Forteo (teriparatide), the problem may be much larger than you know.

You see, Forteo doesn’t fix the problem (I know, I know–I’ve said this at least 4 times already).  So what happens AFTER you’ve had your injection for osteoporosis?  Turns out that, if you are NOT put on ANOTHER drug for bone density after your injection, you lose bone even faster.

This has already been well established for postmenopausal women.  This particular study evaluates whether the use of injections for osteoporosis in premenopausal women lead to the same dilemma.  Here’s what they found in a study of 21 premenopausal women with osteoporosis who were given Forteo:

• The women all had increases in bone density after the injections (lumbar spine 10.8%, hip 6.2%, femoral neck 7.6%).
• 15 of these premenopausal women who had gained 11.1% at the lumbar spine and 6.1% at the hip were not given any additional bone density medications.
• Two years later bone density declined by 4.8% at the lumbar spine, but less at the hip (-1.1%) and femoral neck (-1.5%).
•  The 10 women who lost more than 3% at the lumbar spine (an average of -7.3% lost within 2 years) where the ones who had larger increases in lumbar spine bone density during the teriparatide treatment.  These women also tended to have more bone turnover markers (not a good thing).

So, while the injection for osteoporosis did indeed lead to an increase in bone density, merely TWO YEARS later, their bones were headed south.  It would not be much of a stretch to imaging that these women were going to be worse off then before they started Forteo just a few short years down the line.

The key is understanding that bone density should be checked decades before it hits the crisis stage.  Our office has done bone density testing for years now and promote patients in their 20s, 30s and 40s to have their bone density checked.  We’ve identified more than a few patients whose bone density was 5 or even 10% lower than what it should be for his or her age.

At this point, the changes need to be less dramatic and can sometimes be as simple as increasing intake of vitamin D.  Sometimes it requires a full lifestyle overhaul.  Either way, your best bet is to find out where YOU stand, so you can do something about it before it becomes a crisis and medications are used that may leave you worse off then when you started.

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But I Avoid White Flour and Sugar–Isn’t That Enough?

I can honestly say that it is very rare that patients truly understand what a refined carb is and how bad it is for health.

Which is disturbing considering that refined carbs are known to increase the risk of pretty much every chronic disease known to man.  Regardless of what color it is, if a product contains enriched wheat flour, sugar or high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) it is REFINED and needs to be avoided.

You HAVE to read the ingredients label.  It is sad that many “diet” websites that provide nutritional information do not actually list the ingredients!!

In this particular study, women eating a higher glycemic index diet (which would mean her diet is much higher in refined carbs instead of whole grains) had almost a 300% higher risk of dying from some type of inflammatory disease.  And yet, society as a whole is not being educated on what a “refined carb” is.  Abhorable.

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Very Common Chemical Dangerous in Pregnancy

I have always been and will always remain staunchly against artificial sweeteners.  In ANY amount.

They have become so ubiquitous and so accepted in society today that no one questions their safety.  However, an increasing number of animal and human studies continue to find that these compounds increase the risk of weight gain and diabetes–exactly what people take them to avoid.

I do not care if it is one simple piece of gum per day with aspartame or sucralose.  How little does it take for our bodies to alter our response to sweetness?

If you can’t answer that question with certainty, then the only acceptable answer is NONE.  In this particular study we find that diet sodas actually contribute to preterm birth.  Just one per day increases your risk 38%.  Four per day jumps that risk to 78%.  Bottom line is that these chemicals  are not safe in ANY amounts.

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Can This Simple Test Really Tell Me How Healthy I Am?

While no single test can give a complete picture of health, some tests are unquestionably a better part of looking at overall health.

Body composition testing using a 4 lead device (as opposed to handheld or stand-on body fat meters) can tell you how well hydrated you are, your body fat, your BMR (calories burned at rest) and how healthy your individual cells are.

Another measure it gives it a value called phase angle.  While those who are not electricians can have a hard time grasping the technical stuff, the simple idea is that phase angle values give us an idea of how likely we are to survive bad stuff that happens to us–cancer, surgery, dialysis, AIDS, etc…

The higher the phase angle, the better.  This particular study adds weight to the use of phase angle to determine how likelihood of survival with cancer.  Specifically:

• Patients with a phase angle in the lower 5th percentile had ower nutritional and functional status, lower quality of life and increased mortality.
• The phase angle was also a stronger indicator of 6-month survival than were malnutrition and disease severity.

In other words, the standard indicators of cancer survival were not as good as something as simple as checking phase angle.

Call our office if you’d like to have this test done.  It’s simple, quick and inexpensive ($25).

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How Can We Increase the Likelihood of Breastfeeding?

It seems like society continues to move further and further away from nursing.  There is absolutely no doubt that this move is a BAD thing.

There are compounds in breast milk that we are only now beginning to discover (galacto-oligosaccharides are the most recent discovery).  Formula will never, ever, ever replace breast milk.

I hear often that someone “tried.”  What if they “tried” 2,000 or even 200 years ago?  What then?  If the same attitude was present then, we would likely not exist as a species.  Do you ever see a new mother in the animal kingdom “trying?”

In know this may sound harsh to some, but the second you decide to get pregnant, the decisions you make are impacting that as of yet unconceived child for the next 40, 50 even 60 yrs.  That means that anything we can do to increase the successfulness of nursing is important.

This particular study found multiple factors that delayed the onset of milk production in new mothers.  One of these was mom’s body weight–a factor that needs to be addressed long before a woman actually becomes pregnant.

At some point we need to grasp the idea that every decision, every drop of food, every chemical, every minute of exercise, every stressful period WILL have an effect on that baby for the rest of their lives.  And we need to act like it matters to us.

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Should Our Children Be Eating Soy?

The is no doubt that the earlier a girl experiences menarche, the scarier it is.  This greatly increases the risks of estrogen related cancers like endometrial and breast cancers.

Early menarche also means that the hormonal disturbances that caused the early onset of menses are NOT due to “Mother Nature-planned” physiological changes.  In other words, hormonal disturbances are only the beginning of the problem.  Overall, anything we can do to slow the onset of menarche the better.

In this particular study, researchers found that in girls, the higher her levels of isoflavones were (found principally in soy) the later they reached menarche.  Seems strange, doesn’t it?  The “they” who say soy is evil would have us believe that it is loaded with hormones that interfere with normal development, but in this study (and many others…) we actually see soy intake intake protecting normal development.

As usual, I have to include the typical disclaimer when talking about soy–not the processed, GMO laded textured vegetable protein that makes up the bulk of veggie burgers that you can buy in the grocery store.  Rather, organic or GMO-free soy in all its forms–tofu, edamame, miso, natto, etc…

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Will Eating Too Much Make Me Die Sooner?

The research behind a low calorie, high phytonutrient diet extending lifespan in mammals is quite extensive.

There have been variations on this theme of lowering the calories we take in.  These can vary from full-blow calorie restriction to alternate day calorie restriction.  There is the Bahadori leanness program that uses “mini-fasts” to reach and maintain optimal body composition.

Then there is research on the “longevity genes” (the SRT family of genes) and research on resveratrol for anti-aging.  They all point to the same conclusions:

Too many calories kill us.

The human body is very well designed for starvation and adapting to low caloric intake.  There are NO mechanisms in place to cope with the diseases associated with poor lifestyles.  Sounds strange, huh?

How can diabetes and Alzheimer’s be “genetic” when our bodies have no mechanism in place to deal with the disease state?  It’s the same with high blood pressure.  How can high blood pressure be “genetic” when there is no mechanism in our body to control high blood pressure?  We have a mechanism to raise blood pressure (aldosterone secretion from the adrenals), but not the reverse.

This particular review looks into the research that supports the idea of cutting back on calories (while maintaining quality) as a way of combating chronic disease.

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Alzheimer’s Dementia–Forget Old Age–Are You in Danger NOW?

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We generally think of cognitive loss and dementia as something that strikes the elderly.  It’s something your parents have to deal with.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a patient ask me for help with a parent who was diagnosed with dementia that was at all concerned with his or her own long-term brain health.  Big mistake.

You see–dementia is not something that comes on overnight.  Rather, neurodegenerative diseases attack your brain cells over the course of decades, slowly destroying the neurons that make you who you are.  It is estimated that, by the time a diagnosis like Alzheimers dementia or Parkinson’s disease is made, that particular region of the brain (dopaminergic cells in the substantia nigra in PD, neurons in the hippocampal region and neocortex in AD) has lost upwards of 70% of the brain cells.

I have said again and again that I do not believe we will ever find an effective drug for these conditions in the stages at which they are typically diagnosed.  This is a freight train running.  I do believe that we can slow it down using things like ginko, vitamin E and CoQ10 as well as exercise and mental “push-ups.”

My thoughts on this matter, however, are not shared by the drugs companies and researchers looking for the new blockbuster drug for treating cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s dementia.  Billions have been spent on two proteins found in the brain of Alzheimer’s dementia patients–amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles (NFT–made up of Tau proteins).

The money has been thrown at the idea that, if we could find a drug to destroy these proteins, we’d win the battle against Alzheimer’s dementia (and makes billions…).  All of these trials continue to fail miserably, confirming my thoughts that these proteins are  byproduct of the damage, not the culprits themselves.

Billions of dollars wasted that could’ve been spent educating the public about how to prevent cognitive loss in the first place.  Maybe even buy a treadmill or jumprope for everyone on the planet.

But the drug companies have not yet lost hope at hitting the motherlode of Alzheimer’s drugs.  MAYBE, just MAYBE, we’re not using these drugs early enough.  If we could just give these drugs to patients who are at a higher risk years earlier they might actually work.

Luckily, we have studies like those found in this particular article to help the drug companies out.  In it, researchers looked at 2,125 participants to see if scoring on a composite cognitive test based on tests of episodic memory, executive function, and global cognition had any ability to predict who would develop cognitive impairment / Alzheimer’s dementia years later.  Here’s what they found:

• Lower test scores were associated with the development of AD dementia over the duration of the study.
• In the first year after the testing was done (specifically from 0.1 – 0.9 years later), those who were diagnosed with Alzheimers dementia were 984% more likely to have had the lowest scores.
• Later in the study (13.0–17.9 years), those who were diagnosed with AD were 339% more likely to have had lower testing scores.

In other words, lower scores on cognitive testing were predictive of developing Alzheimer’s dementia EIGHTEEN YEARS later.

Almost two decades.

This once again demonstrates that the changes occuring in the brains of those of us who chose not to live with the healthiest of behaviors begins to show a loss of brain function long, long before any formal diagnosis of dementia would be possible.

But, as I mentioned, beware that studies like these will be used as tools to get the failed Alzheimer’s dementia drugs used on patients who have not yet developed the disease, but who are at high risk because of indicators like cogntive testing.

 

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Are You Paying Attention to What Your Kids Are Eating at School?

We’re always so quick to blame school lunches as being of very poor nutritional quality (they are), but few are very good at looking at what they are choosing to pack in their children’s sack lunches.

Convenience items like cheese and crackers, processed lunchmeat and packaged cheeses are typical.  This particular article finds that few of the sack lunches brought from home meet the low standards provided by the government.

We also need to understand that this starts in daycare, with federally funded programs like WIC providing very low quality, low phytonutrient foods.  Goldfish?  Sugared applesauce?  HFCS yogurt?

Can anyone tell me how these foods fell into the “healthy foods” category?  We need to wake up and realize that we are beginning to destroy our children’s health at a very young age.

Consider this…if we assume 3 meals / day 7 days / wk that is 21 meals / wk.  If kids are eating breakfast and lunch fed to them by a school system, we are talking about 10 / 21 meals per week of questionable value.  That is, of course, assuming that home meals are healthy.

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Why Are There Bacteria in Our Intestinal Tract?

This concept, beyond all others, seems to be incredibly difficult for mainstream medicine to grasp.  We continue to use antibiotics like candy with no thought whatsoever to the destruction of a bacterial presence that has been hundreds of thousands of years in the development.

In hunter-gatherer days, our exposure to soil dwelling bacteria was very common, and their presence in our gut became mutually beneficial.  The list of things that our bacterial flora do for us is virtually endless, as evidenced by the labeling of this bacterial population as another organ system on par with the liver.  This particular article reviews the origins of the bacteria in our gut.

In today’s society, the first exposure to healthy bacteria is via the birth canal and then with breastfeeding.

But what if mom has EVER been on antibiotics?  Scraps that idea.

What if the baby is put on antibiotics early in life and the pediatrician is unaware that the bacteria needs to be replaced?

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