Preventing Bone Loss - The Billion Dollar Lie

Preventing bone loss to preclude osteoporosis as you age has become a BILLION dollar business. It is no wonder that calcium supplements are the number one selling mineral. The dairy industry is the number one provider of calcium in the US diet, and the beverage companies are all adding it for the marketing benefit. These companies just grab onto your fears of the osteoporosis epidemic (up 7-fold in ten years), put a little calcium in a tablet or beverage, and make billions while giving you piece of mind. It sounds like everyone wins…the population gets protection while the companies giving protection make money. Guess what? IT’S NOT WORKING - and the 7-fold increase in a decade (according to the Center for Disease Control) proves it! The big question is not just why is it not working, but what can you do about it.

Let’s start with why our current model for preventing bone loss, as well as why the alternative treatment for osteoporosis, are not working.

Currently, we are being advised by the government and the dairy industry to make sure we getting our calcium from dairy (and for those that are lactose intolerant, to take calcium supplements). Many beverage companies have included calcium in fruit drinks and just about anything else they can think of to help market products. Calcium supplements have exceeded a billion dollars in sales. The U.S. population consumes more dairy then virtually all the countries in the world, and yet has one of the highest rates of osteoporosis disease. How is that possible?

There are three basic reasons why the current government guidelines for preventing bone loss, as well as the alternative treatment for osteoporosis suggestions by companies selling calcium supplements, are not working:

1. Inadequate calcium consumption. 2. Inadequate absorption of the calcium. 3. Excreting or utilizing too much calcium in the body.

There are several interesting explanations behind these reasons.

Inadequate consumption of calcium is said to occur in over 65% of people in North America. Many in the health industry dispute those claims, especially in light of all the consumption of dairy and calcium supplements.  Nonetheless, many people are not getting enough calcium, and for those that are not, it is critical that their consumption of the right type of calcium be increased. Adults are recommended to have 1200mg total daily.

There is false hope provided by the dairy industry. The Harvard Nurses' Study showed that of the 78,000 nurses tested, the ones that consumed three glasses of milk per day over 12 years had the highest rate of fractures, as compared to those that had virtually no dairy consumption. An Iowa study showed that those on whey (milk) protein had significant bone loss, and that it could lead to increase risk of Osteoporosis.  

The promotion of stand-alone calcium supplements, such as calcium carbonate and other inorganic forms of calcium (including Tums and other over the counter antacids, as well as oyster shell, dolomite, and coral calcium) have no scientific basis in preventing bone loss. If there was, with all the money spent we would have seen a decrease in the incidence – but instead, we have a 7-fold increase. Clearly, we have been misled into a false sense of security by these powerful financial promotions.

Inadequate absorption of calcium is a huge problem. The reason we have such an increase in bone loss is that we cannot absorb the forms of calcium we are taking in. The calcium must be combined with other minerals such as magnesium, boron, and silica, as well as vitamins D3 and K, to have maximum effectiveness. Properly chelating the minerals with an amino acid to create an inorganic form will improve absorption into the bone by 75%.  (Most companies not only fail to do this, but some of them go so far as to stick some chelate in the formula so you think the products are chelated. This is false marketing, by companies that are more concerned with their profits than your health).

Adding green foods to the formula in the form of organic juice powders will further increase the absorption. Magnesium, for example, under the above guidelines, is 87% absorbed into the bones vs. 16% in typical supplements.

A poorly functioning digestive system and faulty flora may also contribute to the absorption issue; however, it is mostly the poor product quality and mass marketing playing on your fears that are giving you the problems.

Excreting or utilizing to much calcium compared to your absorbed available stockpile can greatly contribute to your bone loss. You probably know that over 99% of all the calcium in the body is stored in your bones and teeth. The rest is utilized by the body on an ongoing basis for muscle contractions, blood vessel contraction and expansion, secretion of hormones and enzymes, and use by the nervous system. It is also utilized by the blood stream for maintaining the proper PH level, and pulls from the bone reservoir if more calcium is needed.

When you eat meat protein, take in processed acidic foods, soda, sugar, and especially dairy, the balancing of the acidic nature of those foods uses up more calcium then was absorbed from them. When this occurs, the body has to pull calcium from the bones and teeth to balance the body. It will always do this as the blood stream must be maintained in a very narrow PH range to survive. With the current American diet, it is almost impossible to absorb enough calcium through the current guidelines to offset depletion. This is the biggest problem facing the U.S. and other countries adopting the Western diet.

Finally, when you add in drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, and other depleting habits, it is easy to understand that we have a major issue, and the increases in the disease proves it. There are a lot of steps you can take to solve this issue, but that is too lengthy a discussion for this article.  However, you muast at least realize you have been mislead, and take a properly formed product, such as Osteo Rx or some other equal product, that has all the right ingredients, in the proper proportions to give your body the calcium it needs, and can use.