Osteoporosis is a disease in which the density and quality of bone are reduced. The word osteoporosis literally means “porous bone.” It is a disease where the body either loses too much bone, makes too little bone, or both.The incidence of osteoporosis is extremely high, affecting over 200 million women. It affects about 1 out of10 women aged 60, 1 out of 5 of women aged 70, 2 out of 5 of women aged 80 and 2 out of 3 of women aged 90.
First, we must think of the bone as a living tissue. It isn’t static as we might think, but instead the bone is in a constant state of flux and is continually being remodeled where the body is continually replacing old bone with new bone.
As we go through the day we may form tiny microfractures in the bone. But there are different types of bone cells which aid in this repair process.
The first type of bone cell is called an osteoclast, from the Greek words for “bone” and “broken.”
This type of bone cell breaks down the bone, disassembling and digesting the protein and mineral of the bone at a molecular level in a process known as bone resorption.
The second type of bone cell is the osteoblast, from the Greek “bone” and germinate.” The osteoblasts synthesize special proteins and collagen in the areas recently broken down by the osteoclasts which will eventually become strong mineralized bone. Thus, these special bone cells build up the bone cells.
There has to be a balance between the amount of bone being broken down by the osteoclasts and the new bone formation created by the osteoblasts. If the bone breaks down more quickly than it is formed, from increased resorption, decreased formation or a combination of the two, then osteoporosis will result.
At any one moment 2-5 percent of your skeleton is being remodeled. At any point in time there are millions of these tiny areas of bone undergoing active repair in your body. The osteoclastic resorption phase of remodeling lasts for 3-5 weeks and the osteoblastic bone formation and remineralization phase takes another 3-5 months to complete.
Let’s look at some of the common causes of osteoporosis:
Chronic low-level inflammation is one of the primary causes, at a very deep level, of bone loss. The body responds with acute inflammation if there is an injury or an infection, but when this inflammatory response continues on for months or even years, instead of being reparative, the immune system becomes unbalanced and can become destructive to the body.
Factors which cause inflammation could be from lack of friendly bacteria in the gut, allowing for chronic gut infections to grow, such as candida albicans yeast, small intestinal bacteria overgrowth (SIBO), parasites and bacterial overgrowth in the large intestines. These friendly bacteria can become depleted through the use of numerous pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics, steroids, acid reflux medicines, birth control pills and immunizations. Once the friendly bacteria is depleted, chronic infection can occur, and along with it, chronic inflammation, since inflammation is the byproduct of the immune system attacking the infective agents.
Another cause of chronic inflammation comes from overheating of the liver. Nowadays, with the 80,000 environmental toxins combined with dietary toxins create a massive amount of toxicity in the liver causing it to overheat as these hot acidic toxins are filtered through it every minute of the day and night. The liver also converts the blood plasma to blood which causes the blood to overheat as well, which actually means that the heat in the liver spills out into the entire body as the liver heats up the blood as it undergoes this transformation, and now the heat is dispensed throughout the entire body, leading also to chronic inflammation.
Now the blood becomes too acidic and hot, causing the bones to give up their calcium to alkalinize the blood.
And here’s another very important (and often overlooked) factor contributing to osteoporosis: keep in mind that the osteoblasts and osteoclasts are made in the bone marrow. Nowadays many of the environmental toxins (such as air pollution and pesticides) and pharmaceuticals (such as the toxins in the immunizations and many other medications) settle in the bone marrow.
So here’s where the problem lies: when there is either chronic inflammation or toxins in the bone marrow, the stem cells in the bone marrow mistakenly start to make more osteoclasts, the bone cells which break down the bones which results in too much bone loss and not enough bone growth.
Another cause of osteoporosis can be from oxidation of fats in the blood. These oxidized fats come from cooking with refined vegetable oils, and these types of toxic fats that form when you heat these dangerous oils divert the stem cells away from osteoblast formation and toward fat cell formation. The ancient doctors of Ayurveda cognized this issue as well, as they stated in their text books that each of the 7 tissues (blood plasma, blood, muscle, fat, bone, bone marrow and reproductive fluids) transforms into the next tissue. For example the blood tissue undergoes a transformation and eventually becomes the muscle tissue. Now this is very interesting, the fat tissue transforms into the bone tissue, so the ancient texts stated that it’s important to have good quality fat in order to form strong bones. Oxidized fats sitting in the fat tissue form a poor quality fat tissue giving rise to poor quality bone tissue.
Here are some other causes of osteoporosis:
Hormonal imbalances: Both low estrogen and thyroid problems contribute to bone loss
High Vata can emaciate the bones. Vata is aggravated by rushing through the day, eating a diet low in fats or milk, going to bed late and high stress.
Inactivity, on the other hand, can also deplete the bones. When you exercise regularly, your bone adapts by building more bone and becoming denser.
Smoking reduces the blood supply to the bones and the nicotine in cigarettes slow up the production of the bone-producing cells or the osteoblasts. Smoking also decreases the body’s absorption of calcium.
Insufficient Intake of milk and/or poor quality of milk: milk is the number one best food for the bones, but it has to be taken in the correct way. And we want the full fat milk since the fat in the milk delivers the calcium into the bones. Drinking low fat milk will not help to nourish the bones enough.
Low levels of Vitamin D: Most of us don’t get out in the sun enough or we live in areas with lack of sunlight for a large part of the year. Vitamin D helps the absorption of calcium into the bones.
Poor quality fats in the diet cause weak bones while a diet with good fats, such as ghee, olive oil, whole milk, yogurt, soft curd cheeses, avocados, nuts and seeds will form very strong bones.
Excessive alcohol intake can slow bone formation and speed up bone breakdown.
Coffee — the acids in coffee also contribute to bone loss as the bones have to give up their calcium to keep the blood alkaline
Sodas: the phosphoric acid in the sodas interferes with calcium absorption and results in the loss of calcium from the bone.
SO HOW CAN WE PREVENT AND/OR TREAT OSTEOPOROSIS?
The standard medical treatment years ago was to give hormone replacement therapy, known as HRT. But this type of therapy was largely discontinued after a major 15-year research program, the Women’s Health Initiative, demonstrated that the HRT caused an increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, breast cancer and colorectal cancer.
Now the most common form of bone medication is known as bisphosphonates. These medicines poison the osteoclasts, allowing unnatural bone formation as the osteoblasts build up the bone out of balance with what nature intended causing brittle bones which tend to snap and break easily, even the larger bones in the body, such as the femur, and has also been found to cause necrosis (death of the bone cells) in the jaw bone.
In Ayurveda we give herbal remedies and formulations which help the body make its own estrogen and progesterone and don’t have the serious side effects of the synthetically made hormone replacement therapy.
The first thing most people think when they hear they have osteoporosis is to take a calcium supplement. Even without microscopes the ancient doctors knew that the calcium molecule was very large and couldn’t be absorbed into the bones. So they recommended burning the calcium (usually from coral, snail shells and pearls) repeatedly for several weeks, causing the calcium molecule to become smaller and smaller with each incineration. The end product is called a bhasma of the calcium and is actually a very tiny nanoparticle which can be absorbed easily into the bone. Research has shown that most of the calcium products on the market are in fact too large for absorption, never reaching the bone tissue and instead getting stuck in the arteries, causing hardening of the arteries and plaque formation. That’s why taking calcium supplements never seems to help bone formation.
I remember when my teacher Vaidya Mishra used to take the pulses of people who were taking standard calcium supplements he would turn to me and say: “In every patient who takes calcium supplements I can feel the calcium stuck in the arteries, clogging them, and not getting to where they are needed in the bone.” And sure enough research has now demonstrated this.
Many people are deficient in magnesium since it gets depleted when you are under stress, and all pharmaceuticals flush magnesium out of our bodies. In my practice we give transdermal magnesium therapies through the use of transdermal magnesium creams and abhyanga oils made with magnesium which are used for full body oil massage. The skin absorbs the exact amount of magnesium which is needed. Many times when you take magnesium orally it goes through the digestive tract too quickly and can cause diarrhea, preventing its absorption.
We also recommend getting Vitamin D mainly through sunshine and also through transdermal use topically on the skin. Keep in mind that the darker the skin, the more sunlight you need to make Vitamin D, as the pigment in the skin acts like a sunscreen. So a fair-skinner person might get by with about 15 minutes of sunlight a day, while a dark-skinned person might need about a half hour.
We have a special herb from India known as Asthi Shrinkala (asthi in Sanskrit means “bone”) and the best news of all is that we have herbs and foods which can clean the bone marrow, allowing normal formation of osteoblasts and osteoclasts.
We recommend use of good quality grass-fed non-homogenized whole milk, taken in the correct way, which means boiled for best absorption into the cells and taken either with grains or by itself. Goat’s milk can be taken if someone is allergic to cow’s milk and home-made almond or macadamia nut milk and oat milk are also good substitutes.
Toasted and ground sesame seeds are also very nourishing to the bones and can be sprinkled on foods.
Vitamin K2 keeps calcium away from the arteries and joints and directs it into the teeth and bones. Vitamin K2 is extremely rare in the diet, but it is found in ghee, or clarified butter, so don’t be afraid to use it in your diet as it won’t clog your arteries and it is a very high quality fat which will in turn creates high quality bone tissue. We don’t want to take the synthetically made Vitamin K2 as it may cause side effects.
And, as usual, the ancient doctors were correct when they stated that any disease process could be traced back to faulty digestion. This is definitely the case with osteoporosis. The inflammation and infection we see nowadays is caused a lot by problems with the two most important areas in the body responsible for good digestion and assimilation of nutrients: the friendly bacteria in the gut and the liver.
By regrowing the friendly bacteria, cleaning and cooling the liver the chronic inflammation and infection stemming from the digestive system go down, allowing for better bone formation.
Try to exercise for at least a half hour 4 days a week to increase your bone density.
And of course, try giving up your bad habits of going to bed late, drinking alcohol, and smoking cigarettes. Limiting your intake of acidic coffee and sodas will dramatically help your bone health as you turn more towards good mineral-rich alkaline spring water taken directly from the earth.
I hope you learned some important information about your bone health so that you don’t have to suffer the consequences of bone loss that are so prevalent in our society today.
Thank you.