How to Prevent Age-Related Muscle Loss....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 11-3-2015

I got an email today from The Journal of Natural Longevity

To get on their email list,

     email:  info@JournalofNaturalLongevity.com 

Presented by Quantum Wellness Botanical Institute, LLC., a supplement company.

Their article was well enough done, I decided to use an enhanced version as today’s post.

How to Prevent Age-Related Muscle Loss was the theme.

To have decades more healthy life you need to be able to walk and lift things and not be super fat or frail. 

If you have to use a walker or a wheel chair and have people do things for you, your ability to live an enjoyable and productive life is impaired.  And you will likely not live as long.

Simply put, from about age 20 to age 65 people who don’t do some kind of strength training and eat enough protein, their muscles gradually reduce in size and strength.

In addition to this people who don’t prevent this muscle loss, release less of the nerve cell and brain cell growth factor BDNF and have less blood circulation and tend to lose the mitochondria that generates energy in ALL their cells.  This also tends to cause various kinds of mental decline and a reduction in energy and vitality.

And the kicker is that it’s so gradual it’s hardly noticeable; BUT the muscle you lose was burning a lot of calories.  After 10 years you eat the same as you were; but the fat you then gain takes up more room than the muscle you used to be feeding. That results in getting fatter without eating more or even eating badly!

Age-related muscle loss results in “middle aged spread” in both sexes because of this.

So, it’s really quite important to prevent age-related muscle loss to have the decades of extra life worth living you can have!

Here are excerpts from their article with comments and extras from me:

“Age-related muscle loss can kick in as early as your 30s if you haven't taken preventative measures.  

Studies show that without the right dietary and exercise choices, muscles deteriorate at an average of 7 pounds of muscle every 10 years. 

Here's the good news: it doesn't matter how old you are, you can start regenerating muscle in your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and upward.  Of course, prevention is key, but it's never too late to start turning the tables on muscle wasting. 

Why Muscle Maintenance Is So Critical to Health 

As your muscles succumb to age-related decline you are left more vulnerable to falls and hip fractures.  But muscle maintenance doesn't just protect your mobility and keep you physically pliable; it also helps to keep your metabolic function in order.  Your muscles play a significant role in hormone balance, protect against weight gain and obesity, and help keep diabetes and cardiovascular disease at bay.”

1.  Insulin resistance from eating too much fast carbs such as high fructose corn syrup and excess sugar and  any refined grain wheat tends to remove muscle mass!

"The more insulin sensitive you are, the more protected your muscles are.  Insulin sensitivity helps shield the muscles from breaking down between meals or at night when you are sleeping....."

"You can help prevent the effects of age-related muscle decline and help regenerate muscle in the process by activating the mechanism responsible for insulin sensitivity and muscle building: mTOR...."

"The mTOR mechanism must be activated in order for muscle building to occur. If your insulin receptors are resistant, muscle decline becomes unavoidable.”

2.  “Eat More Protein for Muscle Regeneration 

You don't need any supplements or surgeries to activate the mTOR mechanism; you just need to make the right diet and exercise choices.  A varied diet made up of organic and grass-fed food sources is imperative.  Recent research shows that people over the age of 50 may benefit from increased protein intake.  

A 2015 study published in the American Journal of Physiology shows that optimal muscle synthesis is best supported by 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight each day, a recommendation that is double that of the current RDA guidelines."

(The Perfect Workout found that clients who ate less protein than this guideline got less strength increase and health benefits from the otherwise effective strength training there.

Mike Matthews says that more than 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram is not needed; but that power lifters and body builders found that less than that level reduced gains.  This is almost exactly a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight.  

Note that if you are several pounds to dozens of pounds overfat, you do NOT need to eat enough protein for those pounds.  But if you want to gain 10 pounds of muscle or 20 pounds, you do want to eat enough protein for those pounds of added muscle.

Currently I weigh 168 pounds and have about 126 lean pounds.  I want to have 145 lean pounds by adding 16 pounds of muscle and weigh only 161.  This would reduce my pounds of fat from 42 to 16!  So this suggests I should get 126 to 145 to 161 grams of protein a day. But I do NOT need to eat 168 grams of protein or more!)

“An easy way to get more protein is with whey.  Whey protein is made up of essential amino acids, including leucine, which stimulate mTOR and helps create and build muscle.  Whey protein also increases levels of GLP-1, a peptide that encourages healthy insulin levels and boosts human growth hormone.”

(Whey is unusually effective for muscle building and maintaining for another reason:  The protein profile of whey and human muscle is nearly identical.  And research many years ago found that such a protein match increased muscle building and strength increases when people did strength training.

Jarrow sells whey from grass fed cows so you can avoid eating whey high in pro-inflammatory omega 6 oils by using their whey.)

3.  "Exercise Is Essential 

You must exercise in order to maintain and build muscle.

Experts recommend integrating a program of low-level aerobic exercise, high-intensity interval training, and strength training, which is especially important for seniors.  

The American College of Sports Medicine, the American Heart Association, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services all suggest a minimum of 2 days of strength training a week.  

Strength training may seem daunting if you’ve never done it, but you don’t have to start off with barbells like a weight lifter.  You can use your own body weight for resistance, and even if you are extremely frail, you can still do seated strength-training exercises under the guidance of a trainer…working to build that muscle steadily and surely. It is never too late to start regenerating muscle and improving your health!"

Progressive strength training using slow rep strength training with relatively heavy weights you gradually get strong enough to increase is ideal.

(I learned to do this by becoming a client of The Perfect Workout and by trying out the method in two ways in my at home workout that I was already doing.

My next step is to do progressive power lifting with sets of 5 & 3 & 1 where one is my maximum I can lift. And use slow rep strength training with slightly lighter weights than in my set of 5 in addition.  To do this I'll need to go to a local gym where they have the heavier barbells I'll need for this.

4.  Another health benefit of this kind of strength training is that it also prevents bone strength losses in the bones attached to muscles you exercise!

In fact, The Perfect Workout and its use of the Leg Press and slow rep strength training were originally developed to see if such exercise stopped or even partly reduced reductions in bone strength.  It tested to do so with no other interventions added!

But if you also stop drinking all soft drinks because the acid from carbonation and the phosphoric acid in colas leaches calcium from your bones, you’ll stop this very common cause of extra bone weakening.

AND, we now know that taking the real optimum intake of vitamin D3 of 7,000 to 10,000 iu and 200 to 600 mg of magnesium and 3 mg a day of boron and vitamin K2 helps to keep bones strong and even get stronger when you strength train.

Oddly, getting extra calcium seems to be neutral at best and even harmful in people who don’t take vitamin K2.

Conclusion:

People who do these things to prevent muscle and bone loss tend to continue to live worthwhile lives and do things for themselves well into their late nineties.

People who do none of them can wind up in walkers and wheel chairs before age 70 and in nursing homes not long after that.

People who don’t do them even at younger ages become MUCH fatter as well.

So doing these preventive things is well worth it!    

Cut fracture risk by 70%....

Today's Post:  Tuesday, 1-21-2014

Men over 75, women past menopause, and people who take acid reflux drugs are at risk for osteoporosis and dangerous and painful bone fractures. 

Older people who get hip fractures often become immobile and no longer able to live independently.  Worse, their risk of death within 3 years goes WAY up.  The people who get bad osteoporosis have bones all over their body break and hurt.  So avoiding these horrible outcomes is really, really important!

A.  We already know that superslow strength training for all of your body but particularly for your legs will prevent this or come very close. 

Superslow strength training was in fact developed originally about 60 years ago to see if people over 65 with osteopenia might have it reversed by such exercise.  (Osteopenia is low bone density and is often the early stage of osteoporosis a major cause of bone fractures in older people.) It was and superslow strength training was found to work to do that.

Doing superslow strength training well at least twice a week with two days rest between sessions also has massive other health benefits including keeping you mobile as you get older, looking better, and avoiding or permanently losing excess fat.  You also become a LOT stronger.

B.  But there are also some other important things to do or not do to avoid bone fractures and osteoporosis.

Here’s a fast list.  (The big new way to cut fractures by 70 % too is after this list.)

1.  People have stronger bones if they take 4oo mg a day of magnesium and 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3.  If they take acid reflux drugs, it works better if they take 800 mg a day of magnesium and 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3.  Just the magnesium was shown to cut fractures caused by acid reflux drugs by 75%.  (I take the drugs and the magnesium and vitamin D3 and got tested.  I do take enough to prevent this fracture cause according to the two tests.)

2.  Drinking soft drinks both regular and diet feeds you a regular intake of phosphoric acid.  It’s part of what gives them the slightly sparkly and tingly mouthfeel.  But there is a reason to NOT drink them every day or ever!  Every single time you drink one the phosphoric acid removes tooth enamel and bone strength by causing their calcium to be dissolved and removed from your teeth and all your bones.

If you stop drinking soft drinks, you also save money, become less fat, and become far less likely to get or keep type 2 diabetes.

But the big message here is if you do not want osteoporosis or bone fractures, drink ice water, water that has been carbonated only, and for caffeine green tea, tea, and coffee and never drink any soft drinks.

3.  The minerals zinc and boron also help keep your bones strong.  Don’t take more than 45 mg a day total of zinc and be sure you get 2 or 3 mg of copper to balance it unless your body won’t process it.  3 mg a day of boron also helps keep you alert and prevent sex linked cancers surprisingly well besides helping keep your bones strong.

4.  Surprisingly calcium supplementation by itself does little unless the things above are in place.  And unless you take 4  precautions, taking calcium supplements will make your blood vessels calcify instead of your bones.  This boosts heart attack risks.

a)  Eat dairy foods, nuts, beans and lentils, and green vegetables high in calcium.  Calcium from your food enters the blood stream slowly and is most available to your bones.  For many people this is better than the supplements.

b) Limit your supplement to 15o to 250 mg of calcium once or perhaps twice a day;

c) Take calcium supplements ONLY after meals so it enters your blood slowly; and do that only once or twice a day not more.

d) Only take calcium if you also take vitamin K2.  5,000 mcg a day is best.  It’s been found that this supplement sends blood calcium to your bones and NOT your blood vessels.  It’s a good idea to help have strong bones and flexible blood vessels regardless of the other bone strengthening things you do.  K2 is one of the most valuable but little known supplements.

5.  Consider NOT taking the drugs for thinning bones.  The drugs cause acid reflux and the drugs for that tend to cause the problem.  But worst of all, the drugs for thinning bones make your bones harder but NOT less likely to fracture because it tends to stop the normal process of producing fracture free strong bones and promotes dense but brittle bones that fracture MORE easily instead.

C.  The big news is that a study found that people prone to fractures tend to be deficient in vitamin B12.  When such people were given 1,000 mcg or more of the natural and more expensive methyl form of vitamin B12 in sublingual supplements that bypass digestive issues to go directly into your blood, they had 70% fewer fractures than the similar group that did not do so.

THAT is a huge difference!

Also note that people who take acid reflux drugs or the Metformin drug that is in many ways the best drug for high blood sugar and type 2 diabetes have their vitamin B12 depleted.  Vegan vegetarians are often deficient in vitamin B12 if they don’t supplement with this form of it.  And, most people over 75 or who take acid reflux drugs have too little stomach acid to digest B12 from food or a B12 supplement they swallow.

So, the first set of things helps you get and keep strong bones that are less likely to fracture.

And the vitamin B12 dramatically adds to your fracture protection after that!  

Breakthrough in stopping osteoporosis....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 5-30-2013

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Breakthrough in stopping osteoporosis....

An email I get, The Health Watch e-letter a publication of The Institute for Natural Healing recently had information on this breakthrough.

Replenish Melatonin to Protect Your Bones is what their title should have said.

This is HUGE news!

Adding this information to what is already known to do and not do for preventing or reversing osteoporosis just about is a complete cure. 

The drugs are really dreadful with horrible and even damaging side effects and not really sound in the benefits they deliver either. 

Adding this with its good-drug like effects to effective strength training, walking, eating calcium, taking magnesium and enough D3, and taking boron and K2 and NOT drinking soft drinks containing citric and phosphoric acid and even using bioidentical hormone replacement  for some women means that menopausal women and older men no longer need fear or continue to have osteoporosis.

They had this:

“The good news….your body already produces a hormone which can prevent and heal bone damage. If you have enough of it.

Studies testing the hormone on both animals and humans show positive results…

University of Buffalo researchers found that the hormone increased amounts of several proteins responsible for bone formation in mice.

Another study out of Spain tested the hormone on rabbits. It completely repaired bone defects in just four weeks. Even better, the newly formed bone had increased density.

Women who took a supplement of the hormone also had increased bone formation. Even better… they had a decrease in bone resorption—a process where bone is broken down. Too much resorption causes osteoporosis.

And although you’ve heard of this hormone, you never would have thought it has anything to do with bone health.  So what is it?

…. melatonin.

Melatonin is the hormone normally responsible for controlling your sleep and wake pattern. Your pineal gland naturally produces it. But with age, levels decrease. So sometimes you need a supplement to get your levels back to normal. That much you probably already knew. But not this new twist…

Normal melatonin levels are vital in protecting your bones. When your body has enough melatonin it signals cells to produce and mineralize bone matrix proteins. And bone matrix proteins lead to bone formation and increased density. 

Your bones are the support system of your body. But they’re not hard, lifeless structures. They are living, growing tissues. And as you get older, bone density decreases. That puts you at an increased risk for fractures or developing osteoporosis.

The best way to keep your melatonin levels steady is by getting enough sleep. But that isn’t always that easy… 

So, to naturally boost your melatonin levels, eliminate all artificial light from the bedroom when it’s time for bed. Melatonin production is increased by the dark. Even the light from an alarm clock can halt melatonin production. It helps to go to sleep and wake up at the same time too.”

The thing that really got my attention was that study on rabbits that completely repaired bone defects in four weeks with melatonin supplementation.

Super slow strength training of legs and back and chest muscles was developed about 60 years ago to see if it would begin to reverse early osteoporosis.  It did even in people well over 70!  But even though it did work the restoration was partial and took place over a year or two.

This study suggests that supplementing with melatonin AND this kind of strength training would be dramatically effective.

.

(It was discovered that any bone under a muscle which was used with strong weight bearing exercise would get stronger, bigger, and healthier.  The arm bones of baseball pitchers on the side they pitch with are bigger and heavier than the arm they didn’t exercise. Remains of gladiators show the bones in their sword arms were much heavier and stronger than their other arms.)

The best news is that you only need a 1 mg dose of melatonin at bedtime to do the job. 

You can get the sublingual form that goes to work right away in an over 6 month’s supply for less than $20. 

I just did that as I was taking melatonin to ensure good sleep and its brain benefits.

Separate research shows that melatonin also has anticancer effects.

The other factors are important too.

The acids in soft drinks leach calcium from your teeth and drive up your dental bills including needing to get false teeth according to a recent study.  But this effect also is thought to leach calcium from your bones.  So, if you’d like to prevent or reverse osteoporosis, stopping any use of such soft drinks is important to do.  (You also become less fat without getting hungrier if you do that!)

Oddly taking lots of calcium is neither needed nor even desirable.  Taking some but only after a larger meal and eating many kinds of foods containing calcium is both safer and as or more effective.

And, to get the bone building effect of the calcium, it has tested as critical to get extra magnesium 400 to 800 mg a day; 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3; and getting 300 to 5,000 mcg a day of vitamin K2.

These nutrients apparently act as effective catalysts to move the calcium into your bones.

Getting lots of calcium without these nutrients tests as ineffective at building bones.

K2 also helps prevent calcium from depositing in your blood vessel walls which also give it a heart disease protecting effect.

I’m not as sure of the effects of taking 3 mg a day of boron as well; but taking that much some sources say also helps build bones.  And it improves your alertness and has an anti cancer effect.

Great added way to beat osteoporosis....

Today's Post:  Friday, 1-24-2013

Since the drugs now tried for osteoporosis tend to cause bad acid reflux -- and far worse, the bad events they are taken to prevent!! -- other ways to actually solve the problem are badly needed.

Mercifully there are many effective ways to do this.

(We add the new one at the end in part B.  It’s a huge advance!

Feel free to scan down and read that one first if you like.)

Each of these methods work. Why not do ALL of them?

A.  What we already knew to work before this new research:

1.  Weight bearing exercise. Women who walk a lot and do housework standing up AND who know enough to do effective strength training -- BUILD up their bones. (Of course this works for men too!)

It cannot be more directly stated.  People who do this kind of exercise several days every week tend to have strong bones.  People who are completely sedentary tend to LOSE bone strength and bone mass!

2.  Taking 400 mg to 600 mg of magnesium a day even helps strengthen bones for people taking acid reflux medication that lower their ability to digest magnesium in their food.

Plus most people without reflux are deficient in magnesium if they don’t do this! Magnesium beside its other benefits apparently helps your body build bone.

Research found that people who take tons of antacids or the proton pump inhibitor drugs for acid reflux

3.  Most people don’t yet take the most helpful amount of vitamin D3 due to the disinformation about it.

But the people who do know to take 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 and do it build their bones MUCH more effectively. 

Apparently your body needs that vitamin D3 to take the calcium you eat to build your bones with it.  Studies show vitamin D3 plus eating lots of calcium in your food builds bones. Just taking calcium without the vitamin D3 doesn’t seem to do so -- according to research testing it both ways!

(John Farquhar, MD, founder of the Stanford Research in Disease Prevention is semi-retired but still keeps up with the newest and best research in disease prevention.  Almost a year ago I went to hear him speak about how people can use the latest research on disease prevention and he recommended everyone take 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3. 

No surprise really.  When almost all people lived and worked outside, they got tended to get 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 from sunshine.  Life guards in the summer time get over 10,000 iu of vitamin D3 a day from sunshine even now -- and have zero bad effects. Sunburn maybe but NOT harm from that level of vitamin D3.)

Taking 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 has been shown cut the incidence of injuries to muscle and bones – even in football players – in half.  And, it helps people who do have broken bones or serious illnesses recover more reliably and faster.

The research shows that if you want strong bones that are far less likely to break, 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 every day is close to essential.

4.  If and apparently ONLY if you take 3,000 to 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3, eating foods high in calcium builds bones. (Nonfat Greek yogurt or nonfat cottage cheese has a LOT of calcium but is NOT fattening.)

Research indicates calcium by itself does NOT build your bones without enough vitamin D3.

Also, new research finds that calcium supplements release into your blood so fast if you take too much and on an empty stomach that the calcium winds up hardening your blood vessels instead of your bones! 

So, stick with food sources of calcium – OR – take your calcium supplement only after your largest meal of the day.  That makes the calcium release much more slowly and is far safer apparently for your future health and heart health.

If you eat the foods and take these other steps 200 mg to 500 mg of calcium is more than enough in supplement form to build and strengthen your bones.  From what I’ve read, taking more than 500 mg of calcium as a supplement is both overkill, unnecessary, and potentially harmful.

5.   Taking vitamin K2 also helps the calcium you eat or take NOT deposit into the walls of  your blood vessels AND tends to ensure that the calcium gets deposited in your bones instead – much like vitamin D3.  People who avoid meat may be deficient in K2 and taking up to 5,000 mcg a day of vitamin K2 does help you build your bones.

6.  Yet another dreadful and harmful result of drinking soft drinks is that the phosphoric acid in them to give the drink an extra crisp mouthfeel along with the carbonation LEACHES calcium FROM your bones. 

More than one soft drink a week is NOT a good idea for this reason. None ever is a far safer choice just for this reason alone!  Note that the diet soft drinks ALSO do this!

7.  Taking strontium as a supplement might help.  It apparently does make your bones heavier and harder than taking calcium. 

But the word I’ve gotten is that it has not yet been tested to see if your bones become less prone to fractures. It might. But it’s not been tested enough to know I’ve heard.

You also may get enough strontium without taking it as a supplement if you get your calcium from dairy foods since some strontium is in dairy foods also along with their calcium content.

(That’s why radioactive strontium from atomic bombs was once such a worry during the cold war. It then would be in the milk people drank!)

If your bones have gotten really light from osteoporosis and adding some weight and hardness to build on is needed though, in that case, taking extra strontium might make sense.

B.  Here’s the new discovery.

It’s a huge advance because it can easily be added to the others.

By itself, eating this food that they researched has a significantly large effect on building your bones. 

AND recent research shows that eating it ALSO prevents heart attacks, strokes, and can even REVERSE brain aging or prevent it!

You get far more benefit than just the boost in your bone strength.  But this new research says you get that too – and quite a lot!

It’s eating organic blueberries 3 or more times a week!

The research found this one thing to deliver 36% more bone mass AND a 22% increase in bone mineral content AND, in the research, in as little as 14 days!

In the research they may have used the equivalent of much more blueberry extract per pound of bodyweight than people would eat in a week to deliver such results so fast.

But it seems clear to me that eating organic blueberries 3 or more times a week for years as a normal part of your diet can make a very significant increase in your bone strength!

There is also a bilberry supplement you can take daily.  And bilberries are a kind of blueberry.

By the way, it’s very important to eat organic blueberries only because the kind sprayed with pesticides are quite heavily sprayed and the berries then have pesticide residue which is harmful to you.

(Both Whole Foods and Safeway sell organic frozen blue berries.  And I found the ones from Whole foods tasted better and kept better.)

The story was in the Natural Health Dossier, INH Health Watch, email of January 4^th -- 4 weeks ago.

Apparently researchers with the Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center fed rats freeze-dried blueberry extract powder.

And it only 14 days later those rats had a 36 percent higher bone mass than the rats that didn’t. Those rats also had a 22 percent increase in bone mineral content.

Older rats came closer to 15% increase in bone mass than the 36 % found in younger rats.  But that’s still quite substantial!

The email also quoted a study in people showing similar results.

Conclusion:

By doing all 8 of these things -- or all 7 except taking strontium, you can make a very large difference in your bone strength with no need for the drugs which are harmful to take and NOT very effective!

Better than calcium supplements

False headlines and; the truth about vitamins and minerals, Calcium.... Today's Post: Tuesday, 4-24-2012

Most doctors know little about supplements including vitamins and minerals and are too busy to find out more unless they somehow get updated by their patients or other doctors who know more. Some doctors have studied supplements and find they can get superior results with patients by using the indicated supplements.

 Since the supplements cost less than drugs and have virtually no side effects that harm quality of life, far more of their patients actually take the supplements than take many drugs. The drug companies don’t like the competition from those supplements that do work but have none of the side effects most of their drugs do and the supplements cost less.

 (Some drugs do important things and do them fast that supplements cannot do. And, for some things the drugs are the better choice. Then too some supplements may not be that effective. But the drug companies appear to be deliberately misinforming doctors and the media and thus many of the rest of us about supplements that do work.)

 So you may have seen headlines like “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” AND “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer.” But the truth is far different. Very different!

 1. Most vitamins and minerals are beneficial and some are spectacularly beneficial. There a few vitamins and minerals that do have side effects in doses that are too large. But if you know what level is safe on those few, those same vitamins and minerals can benefit you. This makes the headline, “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” false & I think deliberately misleading.

 2. We know 4 things about vitamin E and prostate cancer. The headline as quoted, “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer" is completely false. And the other 3 things help prevent prostate cancer! (The study did not test real vitamin E but a poor artificial copy that was not real vitamin E!)

We covered vitamin E the first week in this series, on Tuesday, 3-13-2012. We covered vitamin D3 last week, on Tuesday, 3-20-2012.

We covered vitamin B3, niacin, on Tuesday, 3-27-2012. We covered the other B complex vitamins last week on Tuesday, 4-3-2012.

We covered vitamin C on Thursday, 4-12

 Last week, on Tuesday, 4-17 we covered vitamin A & carotenes and related compounds.

 This week we cover calcium. There is important news about calcium!

There are supplements you should take if bone health and strength and avoiding osteoporosis are important to you. There is also something you must do and something you must NOT do.

But the new information is that taking calcium supplements may NOT be a safe way to improve your results!

For calcium, and for most people, eating foods high in calcium is much safer and will give you enough calcium. Unfortunately, taking calcium supplements and particularly taking them on an empty stomach worsens and may help cause heart disease.

It seems that calcium goes into your blood stream fast enough that it tends to add calcium to plaque in your blood vessels new research found.

Did you know that how calcified your plaque is has been found to be a more accurate predictor of future heart attacks than most other measures?

Conceptually that makes sense. If your blood vessels are flexible even if they are narrowed and there is a clot it may push aside the narrow blood vessels and not stick anywhere.

But if your blood vessels are so much less flexible they are like stone pipes, the clot will stick and shut down blood flow.

Having inflexible blood vessels also increases your blood pressure which makes heart attacks and obstructive strokes more likely. NOT good!

Many doctors don’t yet know this information. And many women had their doctors tell them to take 500 or 1,000 mg a day of calcium or more to keep their bones strong. Many women and doctors are still doing this.

Worse, taking calcium by itself without the other things we list below is ineffective at strengthening bones or doing much to prevent osteoporosis!

 Ouch!

 So the rest of this post has two parts.

1. The main one is what does work to strengthen your bones and help prevent osteoporosis. (Taking calcium supplements is NOT needed by most people for these things to work.)

 2. What if you have unusually low blood calcium &/or have high blood pressure which too little calcium can make worse or your doctor who you find worth keeping otherwise insists you take some anyway?

 Isn’t there a safe way to take some calcium? There might be. And we say what that is.

 1. What does work to strengthen your bones and help prevent osteoporosis. (Taking calcium supplements is NOT needed by most people for these things to work.)

 a) Eat FOODS that contain calcium most days of every week.

 Lowfat dairy protein foods work. Nonfat yogurt, nonfat cottage cheese, 2% lowfat milk and yogurt, occasional high fat but high flavor cheese like parmesan, and cheese from cows fed only grass all work. As long as you don’t do it more than a few times a month, full fat cheese is likely OK but with the saturated fat and omega 6 from grain fed cows, you should limit it to that.

 Nuts if you aren’t allergic, broccoli florets raw or cooked, most dark greens, and beans and lentils and black-eyed peas also have calcium.

 b) Besides the lowfat dairy, and nuts if you aren’t allergic, and the beans and lentils and black-eyed peas, eat other health OK protein foods, several times a week. Eggs, wild caught fish, and occasional beef from 100 % grass fed cows or lamb from grass fed sheep and some skinless poultry of lean and fat trimmed meat a few times a month all can work. Like everything else in your body, your body needs protein to build new bone. And many of the foods such as lowfat dairy, and nuts, and beans and lentils and black-eyed peas have both protein and calcium.

 c) Take 3,000 to 5,000 to 10,000 iu a day of vitamin D3!

 Research found that people who have enough protein and calcium from food and take that much vitamin D3, tend to build and maintain strong bones. People who are deficient do not.

 Extreme vitamin D deficiency makes bones so weak they named the disease rickets. Even healthy bones otherwise tend to bend instead of staying straight! Since people live inside so much now, you will likely be somewhat deficient if you take less than 3,000 iu a day of vitamin D3. And the Vitamin D Council that tracks the latest research on vitamin D, just recommended taking 5,000 iu a day of vitamin D3 as likely enough to put you close to or into the optimum blood level of vitamin D. (A blood level of 30 or less is quite deficient and NOT good for your bones. 30-49 is somewhat deficient. For strong bones you want to be at 50 or more.

 d) Regular exercise is critical to bone health! Strength training and weight bearing exercises such as walking and hiking and running or using a NordicTrack doesn’t just build muscles and fitness, the regular extra stress on your bones causes them to grow and get denser and stronger in a way that both leaves them healthy and a bit flexible and stronger. (The medications for osteoporosis tend to make bones denser but weaker and brittle and no longer able to self repair. Most people should never take them.)

 Strength training and interval cardio, even bursts of fast walking not only work directly on your bones, they cause your body to release several kinds of growth hormone. So, taking calcium supplements is NOT needed and looks to be harmful.

 BUT regular and vigorous exercise for at least 10 or 15 minutes most days of every week is ESSENTIAL to have and keep strong and healthy bones!

 e) Come as close to never drinking any kind of soft drinks again as you can possibly manage!

 The phosphoric acid in them makes soft drinks, both regular and diet, have a brisker, sharper, mouth feel to make them seem more refreshing.

 But every exposure leaches calcium from your bones and tends to directly cause osteoporosis in anyone who fails to do everything else right. Oops!

 Since both regular and diet soft drinks are proven fatteners and causes of many other chronic disease according to the research. I think it’s well worth trying something else to drink!

 Try filtered water, tea, green tea, coffee, lowfat milk, and occasional real fruit juice or vegetable juice. Try iced coffee or tea or real juice with water that’s carbonated only with no sweeteners or phosphoric acid. Even red wine, dark beer, and whisky is better for you than soft drinks -- as long as you drink little enough at a time you avoid accidents that break your bones!

 f) Eat foods high in magnesium and take 200 to 800 mg a day of magnesium. Magnesium is like vitamin D3 in that your body strengthens and maintains your bones dramatically better when you get enough. And most Americans do NOT get enough magnesium. Worse if you have to take heartburn or acid reflux drugs you must supplement with magnesium since the low stomach acid give you less from the foods you eat. Foods high in magnesium include nuts if you aren’t allergic and most dark green vegetables.

 g) Getting enough nonstarchy vegetables and drinking tea or green tea tends to give you enough vitamin K1. But also taking a vitamin K2 supplement has also been found to add to your bone strength.

 h) Taking 3 mg a day of boron also strengthens bones. Doing so also helps you stay a bit more alert all day which is why I began taking it. One source even says that like eating raw broccoli, taking boron cuts the chances in men of getting the aggressive form on prostate cancer in half. (It might do the same for women for breast and ovarian cancers though I know of no direct test of that.)

 i) Taking menopause reversal hormone drugs that are not natural compounds was found to be less heart protective than initially hoped and to increase somewhat the amount of cancers women got.

 But for women where menopause caused a drop in bone strength, it may be safe to take bio-identical hormone replacement. A doctor who has successful experience using this treatment might be worth trying. This might make sense for some women with osteoporosis where menopause clearly helped cause it.

 It makes sense that this way of doing it would be less likely to have negative effects. (Vitamin E is a proven example: Taking the artificial version of vitamin E in high doses increased the incidence of prostate cancer. But the test of real vitamin E found less!)

 j) What if you need some extra bone strengthening at first? Is there a supplement for that?

 Yes. It has two drawbacks -- one is certain and one it may or may not have but might.

 Strontium is in the same group of elements as calcium and tends to appear with it in smaller amounts in nature.

 That means if you eat lowfat dairy, you will likely get some.

 But when taken in larger amounts, as a supplement, strontium has been found to make bones denser and stronger.

 Taken on an empty stomach, strontium can cause stomach upset. So if you take it, take it after one of your larger meals each time.

 Some people have more problem with this than others.

 The other potential problem is that denser and stronger may not be enough if it makes your bones more brittle.

 Because strontium is a natural substance your body and bones in you and your ancestors likely have adapted to it so this may well not happen.

 And, doing all the other things first and for sure also doing them will make this potential drawback far less likely I think.

 If your bones have lost enough density, you might need to use very light weights in your strength training and build up quite slowly. But if you can walk safely, you should at least do that and the very light strength training.

 If I had low bone density, I’d try strontium. But I’d do everything else listed here first and keep doing it! 

2. What if you have unusually low blood calcium &/or have high blood pressure which too little calcium can make worse or your doctor who you find worth keeping otherwise insists you take some anyway? 

Taking smaller amounts of calcium after your 2 largest meals is far safer than taking twice that on empty stomach. 

So consider taking 250 mg right after one of your two largest meals and again after the other.

 Doing this instead of taking 500 or 1,000 mg of calcium once a day on an empty stomach is much safer! 

Doing this slows the release of the calcium enough it may then be safe to do.

 Also, there are now several marine calcium supplements that essentially give you the calcium as a food component in a concentrated food high in calcium.

 As I understand it, they are concentrates from seaweed high in calcium.

 That would also make the calcium more bioavailable for bone making while minimizing the powdered rock in your blood vessel effect you get with calcium carbonate or calcium citrate.

 For women with existing osteoporosis or who eat too little or are unable or unwilling to eat dairy foods, taking smaller amounts of calcium after large meals from this kind of supplement might be safe and effective.

Note though, it’s not worth doing at all without the 3,000 iu plus of vitamin D3 because without the vitamin D it has no bone strengthening effects at all according to what I’ve read.

Calcium supplements may be harmful & what to use instead….

Today's Post: Monday, 8-2-2010

Last week, several online news outlets had this story. On Thursday, 7-29, Reuters had this headline.:

“Calcium supplements may raise risk of heart attack”

Their lead paragraph read:

“Calcium supplements, which many people consume hoping to ward off osteoporosis, may increase the risk of heart attack by as much as 30 percent, researchers reported Friday.”

The article goes on to quote Ian Reid, professor of medicine at the University of Auckland in New Zealand as saying that supplements -- by being absorbed so quickly, boost your blood calcium levels above normal for four to six hours while calcium from food is very slowly absorbed and does not do this at all.

And, it occurs to me that food sources often have lower amounts of calcium than supplements also which would add to this different effect.

Professor Reid also said that other studies previously have found high levels of blood calcium were liked to blood vessel damage and increased numbers of heart attacks.

I also have heard that scans showing high amounts of calcium deposits in your arteries was much more correlated with heart attack risk than most other risk factors.

So, either high levels of calcium in the blood causes plaque deposits or causes them to be larger and harder by adding to them as they form. This increases the resulting high blood pressure and makes blood vessel blockage more likely by narrowing them and not allowing clots to pass because of the added stiffness of the blood vessels.

So, this has several implications for people trying to keep their bones strong. One is that they should rely on other means than calcium supplements to do so.

The article lists eating calcium rich foods, exercise, not smoking and keeping a healthy weight as alternatives.

So what to do if you have been taking calcium or calcium supplements with magnesium to prevent osteoporosis?

Several things jump out at me as being critically important. And, I also list those things that are actually MORE effective than just taking calcium supplements to prevent osteoporosis.

1. Since you may have increased your risk of heart attack, taking separate steps to lower that risk should be a very high priority.

And, first on that list should be avoiding tobacco smoke. We now know that every exposure to tobacco smoke whether from smoking or from second hand smoke helps add to the creation of plaque in your blood vessels AND can trigger heart attacks in people who would otherwise not get them. Since tobacco smoke apparently also increases the risk of osteoporosis, this is a VERY high priority item indeed!

Foods that have calcium in them include nonfat and very lowfat dairy products, beans and lentils, other vegetables such as broccoli that have some calcium, and cooked wild caught salmon with bones-- and all are foods OK to good for your heart. They help lower high blood pressure. And, they fit well with eating to get or stay free of excess fat to help keep your weight down to the desirable level.

Building up slowly to vigorous exercise and doing it several times a week for many years has recently been shown to be one of the most effective heart protections known. Your HDL goes up, your triglycerides and LDL go down – AND your plaque forming small particle LDL goes down quite a bit.

NOT eating foods containing hydrogenated oils, oils high in omega 6, refined grains, high fructose corn syrup, or high levels of salt; & eating sugar only occasionally in small amounts; and NOT drinking regular or diet soft drinks have the same effects as regular vigorous exercise. These foods and drinks are also fattening. Unfortunately, if you eat and drink them, your heart attack risk goes up. If you do eat and drink them, your HDL goes down, your LDL and small particle LDL go up and your triglycerides go up as well. You also add excess fat. Water, tea, coffee, some 100 % whole grain foods but not too much, extra virgin olive oil, and lots of nonstarchy vegetables of several varieties tend to improve your heart health instead.

2. The very small amount of calcium in multivitamins should not be a problem particularly if you take them just after a meal to slow the release of the calcium.

3. Separate studies have found that taking calcium by itself does not do that much for preventing osteoporosis. But, getting a decent calcium intake in food plus taking 2,000 iu or more of vitamin D3 does seem effective. If you don’t take that much vitamin D3 seriously consider doing so. It not only helps prevent osteoporosis, it has many other health benefits, and it is quite inexpensive besides.

Other supplements that may help include boron and vitamin K2. Given that it’s a related metal to Calcium, strontium supplements might be a bad idea. But people who get a decent amount in food such as whole grains, leafy vegetables and dairy products have been found to have harder and stronger bones than people who do not.

As a supplement, several studies have found strontium to be much more effective at keeping bones strong than calcium. So if you have some osteoporosis now or have a family history of it, you might want to increase your efforts to protect your heart and take the strontium supplements also.

4. Weight bearing and force exertion for your legs and other bones strengthens them and adds to their mass and density in much the same way that they strengthen your muscles.

Swimming and bicycle riding in a seated position may be OK for interval cardio; but they tend to not have the effect you need to build your bones.

Strength training, jumping rope, running, using a Nordic Track, walking, and even doing chores at home while standing all DO build your bones. So start slow with the more intense of these, but the more of these kinds of exercise you do, the stronger and denser your bones will be. (Note that until about 80 years ago, humans everywhere walked at least two or three miles every day. So, walking may be particularly important to do. And, you do NOT have to be superfit already to begin doing walking several times a week.)

Doing such exercises regularly may in fact may determine more about your bone strength than what you eat.

5. Do NOT drink soft drinks, particularly colas. The phosphoric acid in them tends to de-mineralize your bones if what I have read is correct.

And, that’s in addition to their very powerful fattening effects! (Note, in case you don’t yet know, diet soft drinks also fatten as they are an effective appetite for sugary foods stimulant.)

Pale Ale better for you than soft drinks....

Today's Post: Monday, 2-8-2010

Several online news sources today had two stories of interest. Each of the two stories was reported by more than one source.

1. Readers of online news and this blog in particular already know that both regular and diet soft drinks tend to make people fat and to make it dramatically hard for people who drink them to lose fat and keep it off.

As we’ve posted often, just cutting out soft drinks alone can help many people who drink soft drinks lost 40 to 60 pounds of fat with NO increase in hunger or even becoming LESS hungry. (Unfortunately, the information I’ve seen is that diet soft drinks tend to make people so much MORE hungry for sweets, you have to stop drinking those also to avoid or stop being fat.)

But soft drinks do have other health dangers. For some people, knowing those other health dangers can help them to switch to coffee, tea, green tea, some real fruit juice, or water or even plain, carbonated water instead.

Pancreatic cancer is a deadly as metastasizing melanoma – virtually incurable with today’s knowledge -- and deadly. In fact, pancreatic cancer may be worse. There are now some promising therapies for late stage melanoma.

These things make today’s news very important and significant indeed.

A study published in the journal, Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, said that the researchers who kept track of 60,524 men and women in the Singapore Chinese Health Study for 14 years found that some people, 140, developed pancreatic cancer.

The real surprise was that they also found that people in the study who drank as little as two or more soft drinks a week had an 87 % higher risk of getting pancreatic cancer than those who didn’t drink soft drinks!

The NewsMax article listed other risk factors for pancreatic cancer. To be fair, smoking increased the risk by 300%.

But the astounding finding in this study was how little was needed to produce this 87% higher risk. That’s two soft drinks a WEEK folks. NOT two soft drinks or more a DAY -- which is more typical of people who drink soft drinks. If that risk goes up when people drink seven times as much, typical drinkers of soft drinks, two or more a day, may face risks for pancreatic cancer comparable to smokers! Yikes !!

2. The story with dramatically better news about a common kind of recreational drink was for the kind of beer called Pale Ale. We know separately that men can drink a drink or two a day and usually have more health benefits than health harm. (More than that begins to be harmful and already is in some cases.) Women get less heart protection from drinking alcohol than men according to a recent Spanish study. (See our post last Friday, 2-5.) And they can only drink about half that much, one some days and rarely two for a total of 6 a week or less, before it does them more harm than good.

But the several stories today revealed that beer has an unusually bioavailable form of silicon which helps your bones become stronger and more dense.

Even better, the ales and pale ales in particular have so much of this form of silicon that just drinking two a week total has been found to help prevent osteoporosis.

So now, red wine has a good for your health competitor. In our area of the country, Sierra Pale Ale is often readily available. It’s good beer. And it’s just dark enough for people who like dark beer normally and just light enough for people who like beer that’s not dark.

The form of silicon in Pale Ales was found to be 50% bioavailable compared to the kind in bananas that’s 5% bioavailable. And, since Pale Ales have 30 to 56 mg of this kind of silicon per drink, drinking just two a week gives you 60 to 112 mg a week or an average of about 8.5 to 14 mg a day over a week’s time.


So, if, most weeks, you want to have a recreational drink or two with health benefits, you’ll prevent both pancreatic cancer and osteoporosis according to these stories if you stop drinking soft drinks and drink Pale Ale instead!

On a more serious note, you CAN get this form of silicon in hops supplements or by eating whole grain barley which is how it gets into the Pale Ale. So, if you’d like to get the bioavailable silicon without the alcohol, you can.

I was just struck by the two stories appearing on the same day and by the knowledge that both soft drinks and beer are drunk by people for enjoyment.

Why hurt your health with your recreational drink by drinking soft drinks, when you can make your bones stronger and get a bit of stress relief too by drinking a bit of Pale Ale instead?

Prevent or reverse thinning bones....

Today's Post: Thursday, 8-20-2009

Since I've had to take the proton pump inhibitors for my reflux disease, I've paid some attention to what things I might do to prevent or dramatically slow any bone thinning or increased fracture risk in order to compensate for the effects of those drugs.

In case you have an interest, here are some things I found out.

Drinking any soft drinks tends to thin bones; but drinking a lot of any colas is worse. The excessively high phosphorous intake tends to pull calcium from your bones. (Drinking tea and green tea gives you a lift similar to colas while making your bones stronger instead of weaker.)

The thinking now is that beyond the modest amount in a vitamin mineral daily supplement, calcium is best gotten from food sources. Cooked, wild caught, canned, salmon because of the included bones and nonfat, low fat, and very low fat dairy foods seem to be the best sources.

Weight bearing exercises every week, even if only a daily walk, seem to help.

Low impact aerobics also work, such as elliptical trainers, stair steppers, and using a mini trampoline. (The mini trampoline at www.urbanrebounder.com is less than $190 including taxes and shipping while the others usually require a gym membership. And, you can use the mini trampoline at home.)

Strength training also works. You can do strength training in a gym.

You can also do strength training at home. Push ups work well (start with pushups from the knees instead of toes can work well at first.)

You can do quarter or one third squats with no added weight or holding dumbbells or on one leg at a time when you get stronger (full to one half squats can be a bit too hard on the knees ).

Sitting against a wall legs parallel to the ground as if you are sitting but with no chair also works. The trick with those is to count while you do it. Suppose you feel it’s time to stand back up after a count of 40. That’s fine. Just keep doing more each time until you get over 300. I do 300 in the one third squat position as a warm up and am now up to 356 in the legs parallel position that I do immediately after the 300 warmup. It takes 4 or 5 minutes each time and definitely has made my legs stronger.

We now know that taking at least 2,000 iu extra a day of vitamin D3 is important for your health and among other things will help prevent depression, particularly in the winter, and will help prevent most cancers and even autoimmune diseases. In addition, getting that much D3 each day plus adequate calcium works best to maintain bone strength and density; & it works MUCH better than calcium alone.

(Up to 10,000 iu a day is safe. And, since D3 is very inexpensive, you might even consider 5,000 iu a day if you've not been taking it, to get you to an adequate blood level.)

At least 200 mg a day of magnesium and 3 mg a day of boron may also help maintain bone strength and density. And, they both have other health benefits. (I take 600 mg a day of magnesium as it helps lower blood pressure to health OK levels. I take the boron for its help in increasing alertness and helping prevent prostate cancer. It’s nice to know it helps bone strength too.)

And, for bone strength, they've found that taking a strontium supplement makes bones both harder and stronger within a relatively short time. (I take the other things; & plan to add strontium myself soon.)

Strontium, 3 other supplements, and several of the ones I list above are in a multiple supplement combo for increasing bone density and strength.

I prefer to take supplements separately and get each one from companies I think put the stated amount of the supplement in their supplements.

So, this kind of private label, multiple-ingredient supplement, no matter how well researched, doesn't appeal to me.

However, the ad for this multiple supplement combo for increasing bone density and strength had such strong evidence for strontium, I saved the ad.

Here's a cut & paste from the ad.: (I included the toll free number for those interested -- and, as a compensation to them for providing the information on strontium. I already take most of the other components in their supplement for other reasons.)

"The little-known mineral that cuts your risk of fracture in half — and even reverses 7 years’ worth of bone loss!

This little-known mineral is chemically similar to calcium, but much better absorbed. And it stays in your bones longer than calcium, too.

Multiple studies show that it can help fragile bones weakened by age, heredity, and other risk factors become stronger and more flexible. In fact, studies show that it can reduce your risk of suffering a debilitating or even deadly fracture in half and increase your bone density by a whopping 14%. That corresponds to about 7 years’ worth of bone loss.

Best of all, this mineral is safe, fast-acting, inexpensive — and seems to get results for just about everyone who tries it, no matter what their age.

What is this exciting new bone-building mineral? It’s called Strontium.

If you haven't heard of strontium before, I'm not surprised. Though it’s been around for quite a while, the news about its remarkable benefits for bone health has only recently come to light.

Strontium has been used as a medicinal remedy for over 100 years. But its effects on bone health were first tested back in 1959, when researchers at the world-renowned Mayo Clinic treated a group of patients suffering severe bone loss with strontium. Much to their shock, every patient in the study experienced some level of improvement.

As impressive as this news was, it didn't receive much attention. Why? When the drug companies found their patented form of strontium used in the studies, called Strontium ranelate, was no more safe and effective as the non-patented natural forms, they decided not to sell it. They couldn't profit from it, so it wasn't worth their time.

So this remarkable news remained buried for nearly 50 years.

But strontium is finally getting the attention it deserves, thanks to a wave of exciting clinical studies conducted over the last two years. The results make it clear that strontium could be the key to making your bones virtually unbreakable — and keep them that way for decades to come. Consider this:

• It cuts risk of fracture nearly 60%: In one study of elderly women over the age of 80, those who took strontium alone slashed their risk of fracture by 59% in the first 12 months of treatment. These findings prove strontium can drastically reduce fracture risk and improve overall bone health no matter what your age. Imagine what this can do to help you remain active and independent for the rest of your life!

• It’s more effective for building healthy bones than calcium and vitamin D combined: In another study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, women who added strontium to their bone-building program cut their risk of fracture by 49% in the first year. That’s practically in half! Plus, they increased bone density in their backs by 14.4% and in their necks by 8.3%. Meanwhile, the group who took only calcium and Vitamin D saw NO increase in bone density whatsoever.

• It can help you stand taller and stay pain free: Other studies show strontium slows the rate of height loss by an amazing 20%. It also helps 20% more patients experience relief from back pain. That’s important, because the vertebras in your spine become more fragile over time and more prone to collapsing. Strontium can help slow down, even reverse this process — while helping to soothe your aching back, too.

So exactly why does strontium work so much better than calcium to make your bones practically unbreakable? Because unlike calcium....

Strontium performs double-duty action for boosting your bone health

Strontium not only slows down the breakdown of bone, it actually stimulates new bone growth. That’s unheard of. No other nutrient can work so well at doing both.

Strontium: The Remarkable Bone-Building Superstar Your Doctor Doesn't Know About

If you’re at high risk for osteoporosis, strontium may help. But whatever you do, please don't confuse it with strontium-90, the man-made, radioactive compound that has nothing to do with bone health!

I’m talking about natural strontium. This is a non-toxic trace mineral that studies show can help fragile bones weakened by age, race, heredity, or other factors become stronger and more flexible. Natural strontium is safe, even in high doses.

Ultimate Bone Support delivers 500 mg of strontium, the level shown in studies to provide the most benefits. It’s also provided in a form that’s easy for the body to absorb, citrate, the same form that’s best for calcium.

Strontium is chemically similar to calcium, but it’s stronger and less dense. Your body absorbs strontium just like calcium, so it can replace lost calcium in your joints and teeth and even increase bone density.

But you should not take a calcium supplement at the same time as strontium. When that happens, strontium and calcium compete for absorption in the body—and in that tug of war, calcium always wins because your body uses calcium in other ways. Which means you'll miss out on strontium’s bone-building benefits completely, even if your bones are fragile.

So if you want to take a calcium supplement, make sure you take it a minimum of 4 hours prior to taking Ultimate Bone Support.

Just two capsules of Ultimate Bone Support daily gives you ‘extra’ insurance for making sure you stay healthy, remain independent, and live each and every day doing the things you love to do. After all, isn't that what life is all about?

Ready to get started? Click here or call toll-free 1-800-791-3395 to order Ultimate Bone Support today.

How does strontium do this? It attracts important minerals like calcium, magnesium, boron and zinc to absorb directly into your bones. As a result, your entire skeleton becomes thicker and stronger in a relatively short time — less than a year, in most cases.

In one study conducted at the prestigious McGill University in Montreal, patients who took strontium for only six months showed a remarkable 172% increase in the rate of bone formation. They felt less bone pain, too.

Since strontium is stronger and denser than calcium, it’s also more resistant to the action of osteoclasts — the cells in your body that cause your bones to weaken and break down. So it slows down the cycle of bone destruction, too.


People ask me all the time: “If strontium works so well, why hasn't my doctor recommended it?”

Good question. With doctors having to squeeze in as many patients as possible in a single day, they're more pressed for time than ever. As a result, they don't have time to keep up with all the latest studies. And whatever news they do get is either through drug company sales reps, or in medical journals subsidized by the drug companies.

Strontium’s benefits for bone health flew under the radar until recently. I first heard about it two years ago and researched it extensively. I ended up with a four-inch-thick pile of studies on the subject. At last count, I found over 220 published articles on strontium and its effects on bone health.

Judging from the research I’ve seen, strontium seems to get results no matter how old you are, or how weak your bones may be. Plus other studies suggest strontium is more effective than calcium for supporting the health of your teeth and joints.

There are more than enough studies on strontium’s benefits for building up bones and avoiding fractures. I suggest you consider it. It’s completely non-toxic, even when taken in large doses over a long period of time.

In fact, a two-year, double-blind study found strontium to be safer than a placebo! Not only did the women taking it significantly improve their bone mineral density, but they experienced fewer side effects than those taking the placebo.

Where can you get strontium? It’s not widely available in supplement form — unless you know where to look. That’s why I got together with the research team at Advanced Bionutritionals.

Together, we created an exclusive formula called Ultimate Bone Support. It combines the bone-building power of Strontium with 9 additional nutrients to keep your bones strong and fracture-free for life. Nutrients like..."

X* X* X* X*X*

This is very persuasive information. I have, however, found that most supplements are available from other companies even when one company claims this is not the case.

I've not yet added strontium to my supplements as I can only afford so many, & I'm giving priority to those that support general good health and those that prevent cancer, heart disease, and mental decline.

However, by April 1st, I'll have more income & likely will begin taking strontium then.

Unfortunately, since I've not yet researched a good brand for stand alone strontium supplements, I can't yet recommend one. But a knowledgeable health food store owner who carries several brands might know of one. Or you can enter strontium at www.vitacost.com in their search box as they carry most brands of supplements.

Three other supplements are included in that multiple bone strength supplement that are worth mentioning.

Silicon & l-lysine.

Here's their info on Silicon: "Silicon: When doctors back in Ancient Greece treated bone discomfort, one of their standby remedies was an herb called horsetail. We now know horsetail is a rich source of silicon, a nutrient that helps form collagen and connective tissue. It also helps stimulate the activity of osteoblasts — the bone-building cells.

In the recent study of the offspring of more than 2,800 participants in the Framingham Heart Study, researchers found that those who supplemented with silicon experienced higher bone density.

Ultimate Bone Support contains 4 mg of Silicon from horsetail extract."

The ad also noted that l-lysine helps the body form new connective tissue -- including in bones. (And, if you take it with 1500 mg a day of vitamin C, it may help prevent heart disease.) Whole Foods Markets has a Whole Foods brand of l-lysine that is quite inexpensive. For the heart protection, I take two 500 mg capsules a day. So, for bone health, I already have that base covered.

The third supplement is their version of hops extract. They say that this makes your body continue to build as much bone as the natural process tends to break down. And they note that in younger people these two processes are in balance; but in older people for some reason the breakdown part continues fine while the build back process slows down – which results in decreasing bone density and strength.


So, since hops extract also tends to lower anxiety levels, taking a hops extract may also make sense as a bone strengthening supplement.

(Since beer tends to contain some silicon and definitely contains hops, that may mean that an occasional dark beer also might be helpful.

Unfortunately, drinking enough to provide as much silicon and hops as the supplements will likely make you fat and may cause other problems.)