O Ye Dry Bones

Osteoporosis, everyone thinks, when I am old, as a lady, maybe I will have to deal with that. Well, old can slip up awful quick, and “Got Milk?” is just a marketing campaign, not preventative health.

The typical path is that bone thinning and loss is first picked up in an x-ray or bone scan. If it’s picked up on x-ray, you have lost over 30% of bone mass; that’s late in the game. The bone density scans can pick up decreasing density, but typically are done once every 2 years; a lot can happen in two years.

When we think of bone, a disconnect happens, even among health care practitioners. The concept that all our systems function as a whole, not as individual parts, seems to stop with bone. The bones too are living tissue, with a continual process of breaking down and building up. Bones provide structural support, are storage vessels for the key minerals, like calcium and phosphorous, and are filled with fatty marrow (where the white blood cells of the immune system and the oxygen-carrying red blood cells are formed). Skeletal health is important for structure and cell production.

As a chiropractor, I need to address symptoms and causes. With bone loss, it is the same. There may be a time when medication is needed to stop the hemorrhage of bone loss, but if you don’t address the imbalance and disfunction in your body, you will have a lifetime of medication. It will be your new normal. Having the ability to tolerate something is not synonymous with health.

Bone building activity naturally decreases as a person gets older, and bone breakdown activity ramps up. The obvious assumption is that the bone breakdown would slow with age too... but here is the MAJOR ISSUE and CONCEPT...aging does not directly cause osteoporosis, but the inflammatory conditions that accompany aging do.

When there’s inflammation happening, the cells that breakdown bone have a shorter lifespan, but they become much more aggressive…and start breaking down the bone more.

Taking calcium and vitamin D and engaging in weight-bearing exercise, although helpful, will not match the overpowering destructive nature of chronic inflammation.

Osteoporosis is not just a breaking down of bones; it is a breaking down of the body’s entire physiology. You have to address your whole body.

Medications for osteoporosis can be extremely valuable, but they are overprescribed and almost never used as they should be—as an adjunct to a solid therapeutic protocol based on nutrition and lifestyle. Everyone would like to find the magic pill that replaces hard work and self discipline. And everyone wants to start Tomorrow....

I heard a saying that said, “If you wait until all your glasses match, you will never have anyone over for dinner.” If we apply that principle to health, “If you wait until you ...(feel good, have energy, slept enough, have extra money, have time) to begin, you will never begin."

So I will provide bullet points to consider- address and assess... not as a substitute to actual health care, but to “get the ball rolling.”

Let me clearly state that I in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS DO NOT ADVOCATE getting your health directive from YouTube, some book you read, or Facebook (haven’t we seen their political slant that should NEVER be applied to health and new age Genesis 11 beliefs???).
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Like Ecclesiastes states, there is nothing new under the sun. There is no shortcut for effort, discipline, and application of the truth that you may already know. Also, as we age, more effort is required to achieve the same or less results. God numbers our days, and we attempt to be good stewards of the vessel He gave us.

1. Eat healthy - medicine is for disease; food is for health. Look for quality over quantity.
2. Use supplements — they work. If your past the point of “general heath,” get labs to see what you need. You can spend a lot of money shooting at everything, but maybe not what YOU need.
3. Get labs done for bone resorption markers. Know if you are breaking down or building more bone.
4. Balance - balance - balance. Balance your gut health, hormones, and inflammation. 5. Check your acid-alkaline balance.
6. Exercise. Daily. Often. The best type of exercise is the type you will ACTUALLY do.
7. Flush toxins. Sometimes our bodies need a spring cleaning, too.
8. Recheck - reevaluate and adjust. Our body is not static. What works when your working may not work if you become more sedentary.

Overwhelmed? Start small. Focus on one thing and succeed. Build success on top of success. Line upon line: it takes effort to make any choice. Make a good one and treat yourself like someone God loves, because He does.