Bisphosphonates and bone strength
By Linda on May 16, 2010 in Interesting Stories | comments(2)
Longevity Plus had effective answers to osteoporosis with their Beyond Bone, H.R.T. Plus and Beyond Any Multiple but the public will prefer the subsidized poisons offered under our health care system, unless you educate them about the dangers from bisphosphonates like Fosamax.
My focus in antiaging medicine has been to have soft arteries and hard bones at 90 and since I used to be in radiology I could always see the calcified outline of the aorta. Of course with bone density tests finding at least 50% of women by age 50 have bone loss, it is great market for the useless but FDA approved drugs that are doing real damage.
We used to see bones look really dense if the patient was given Fluoride treatment, yet that was not healthy bone but again for years doctors believed that was a good treatment too.
I am amazed at how strong the bones of my elderly patients are when using BAM, but preferably Beyond Chelation-Improved, as getting the lead out of bones aids this process of healthy bone repair that H.R.T. Plus and Beyond Bone induce.
Your patients are not being told the true story on benefit to risk ratio. They are being set up for increased risk of fractures in areas that seldom break, lesions in the jaw known as jaw death, esophageal ulcerations and cancer, and double the risk of Atrial Fibrillation.
Garry F. Gordon MD,DO,MD(H)
President, Gordon Research Institute
www.gordonresearch.com
Full article: http://www.healthwatchersnews.com/2010/02/bisphosphonates-bone-strengtheners-or-bone-hardeners/
Excerpt:
Bisphosphonates are now the most widely marketed and prescribed patented, FDA-approved anti-osteoporosis drugs. Bisphosphonates mimic, to some extent, the effects of estrogen on bone in that they work by inhibiting bone resorption [the process by which old bone is removed to make room for new bone]. However, like estrogen, these drugs have no ability to build new bone.
Currently FDA-approved bisphosphonates, including Fosamax (alendronate), Actonel (risedronate), Didronel (etidronate), Boniva (ibandronate), and Reclast (Zometa) (zoledronate), are designed to strengthen bone by inhibiting normal osteoclastic bone resorbing activity, which slows the loss of bone mineral density (BMD), allowing the trabecular architecture to stabilize. Notice that this has nothing to do with stabilizing the balance between estrogen and progesterone, restoring calcium levels, or any other natural process.
Like many other patented drugs, bisphosphonates are synthetic analogs of an important natural bone-building chemical, pyrophosphate, which normally helps bind calcium to bone tissue through a process known as mineralization. Unlike pyrophosphate, however, bisphosphonates actually block normal mineralization as well as osteoclastic bone resorption.
Large, placebo-controlled trials generally show that these drugs can indeed increase BMD and reduce the risk of vertebral, hip, and other nonvertebral fractures in women with osteoporosis—at least in the short run. That’s the good news. Merck, the company that markets the leading bisphosphonate, Fosamax (now also sold generically as alendronate), seized upon results like these to turn its drug into a blockbuster worth as much as $3.6 billion per year. Use of Fosamax and other bisphosphonates has been growing at an especially rapid rate since 2002, when the publication of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) results scared women away from “estrogen” replacement, which until then had been the leading conventional method for preventing osteoporosis.
Unfortunately, all may not be so rosy after all. Trials lasting up to 10 years are beginning to raise doubts about the long-term safety and efficacy of bisphosphonates. The main problem is that bisphosphonates not only directly—and unnaturally—inhibit osteoclastic bone resorption, they also indirectly inhibit the other side of the bone-building coin, osteoblastic bone formation.
