Philip J. Goscienski, M.D.
April 2008
"One out of every two women over the age of 50 will have a fracture in her lifetime" according to a current TV commercial. It's small potatoes compared to what's in store for their granddaughters.
It's a misconception that osteoporosis is the result of aging. Elderly persons in Third World countries have rates of osteoporosis — and it's most feared complication, hip fracture — that are far lower than their genetically similar sisters in the United States and other developed countries.
Why the difference? Undeveloped countries, by definition, have few of the wheeled and mechanized devices that make life easy for Americans. Those poor folks have to walk everywhere, lift and carry anything that needs to be moved, including their babies, and use more energy preparing a single meal than most U.S. moms exert all day. All that physical activity puts stress on their bones and causes them to be thick and strong.
Third-Worlders' calcium intake is puny compared to ours. There isn't much of a dairy industry in Asia or Africa and nearly 100 percent of those populations can't tolerate dairy products. They rely on plant foods, whose calcium is more than adequate, just as it is for cows.
American teenagers and twenty-somethings have a nasty surprise in store when they reach late middle age: osteoporosis. This Third Epidemic (the first two are obesity and type 2 diabetes) is the result not just of poor diet and little physical activity but also of factors that they can't control.
Ninety percent of women of all ages get too little calcium in their diet. Soda has replaced milk as their most popular drink, a complete reversal from a little more than a generation ago. Their low intake of green leafy vegetables deprives them of other bone-building nutrients such as magnesium, vitamin K, boron and other minerals. Youngsters' favorite "vegetable," french fries, is lacking in almost all of them.
The human skeleton is almost complete by the age of 25 and without lots of weight-bearing physical activity between kindergarten and college graduation it won't reach full development. Nature is cruel: we can't make up for the bone-building that should have taken place earlier.
From the thirties onward our bones continually lose mass — and become more fragile — unless our diet is adequate and our physical activity is moderately intense on a daily basis. Most adults, of course, don't exercise nor do they get enough of the bone-building nutrients that come from a diet high in fruits, vegetables, dairy products and fish.
There's another factor that even few physicians know about. Osteoporosis can begin in the womb if a mother's diet is poor and her own skeleton is not fully developed. That might partly explain why fractures are increasing even among pre-teens.
The solution is simple. Too bad that it's not easy. Children should have a full hour of moderately intense exercise every day; adults should have at least half that much. A diet that helps to insure good bone growth is the same that will help to lower the rate of obesity and type 2 diabetes: more fish, fruits and vegetables, less junk food.
Just think. We can avoid three epidemics for the price of one.
Philip J. Goscienski, M.D. is the author of Health Secrets of the Stone Age, Better Life Publishers 2005. Contact him at drphil@stoneagedoc.com.