"Avoiding drugs that increase the likelihood of falling may be just as important as taking drugs that can make bones stronger," add People's Pharmacy authors Joe and Teresa Graedon, especially sedatives, sleeping pills and anxiety pills.
In fact many everyday pills like diuretics, anticoagulants and SSRI antidepressants can cause osteoporosis says an October article in The American Journal of Medicine. And obesity could be as much of a factor in fractures as osteoporosis says a February article in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, contrary to previous thinking.
Meanwhile, the old standbys calcium and Vitamin D reduced fractures by 50 percent in a January British Medical Journal study of 68,500 younger women while bisphosphonates exerted no action (unless you count that they "negate the effect" of the two supplements, according to the authors) In fact, Vitamin D and calcium, given with placebo, actually outperformed Prolia in clinical trials.
And researchers are also looking at Vitamin K for osteoporosis protection and the elder plant, often taken to boost the immune system.
And then there's diet.
"There is growing evidence that consumption of a Western diet is a risk factor for osteoporosis through excess acid supply," says an article in the February Proceedings of the Nutrition Society. "Healthy adults consuming such a diet are at risk of chronic low-grade metabolic acidosis, which worsens with age as a result of declining kidney function."
Dean Ornish, Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco agrees. "For every gram of excess protein consumed (sulfur amino acid in particular) calcium loss is increased by 1 mg," he writes in a 2005 Journal of the American Dietetic Association. So do recent articles in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, Osteoporosis International, nutritionist Nathan Pritikin and probably Michael Pollan. In fact, research funded by US Department of Agriculture itself at the University of California, Davis also found such protein could actually slow bone growth.
Yet even as USDA warns about the dangers of high milk, cheese and meat consumption it pushes them on behalf of agribiz, says an article in this month New York Times.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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